THE LITERARY LIFE 
AND OTHER ESSAYS 



Printed by Maunsel ct Roberts, Ltd., Dublin 



THE LITERARY LIFE 
AND OTHER ESSAYS 

p. '"a/canon sheehan, d.d. 



NEW YORK 

J. KENEDY AND SONS 
1922 



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CONTENTS 



PAGE 



THE LITERARY LIFE I 

OPTIMISM IN LITERATURE 35 

OPTIMISM IN DAILY LIFE 46 

AN UNPUBLISHED PREFACE 58 

CATHOLIC LITERARY CRITICISM 68 

THE AMERICAN REPORT ON IRISH 86 

EDUCATION 

THE IRISH PRIESTHOOD AND POLITICS I 09 

THE DAWN OF THE CENTURY 121 

NON-DOGMATIC RELIGION I5I 

THE MOONLIGHT OF MEMORY I 68 

LENTEN TIME IN DONERAILE I 87 



PREFACE 

Canon Sheehan needs no editor's introduction, 
even to the present generation, though it has lived 
to see an Ireland vitally different from that so 
affectionately described in his reminiscent essay, 
" The Moonlight of Memory " — as different, perhaps, 
as that rather unheroic epoch was from the time of 
Sarsfield. That essay and another, *' Lenten Time 
in Doneraile," in which he tells of an aspect of our 
national life which is splendidly unchanging, were 
written only a year or two before his death. The 
rest are of much earlier date. The papers on 
literature were delivered as lectures some thirty years 
ago. The political and religious essays are for the 
most part the work of the same period of Canon 
Sheehan's life, and any topical allusions in them 
explain themselves. 1896 is the date of the admirable 
but discarded preface to " The Triumph of Failure," 
which was itself first published in 1899. *' The 
Dawn of the Century " vras delivered as a lecture 
in 1904. 

In editing this work I have taken no liberties with 
the manuscript beyond some trifling alterations in 
punctuation. The editor of a posthumous work is 
always faced with this difficulty, that he must pass 
some things, be they many or few, which he feels 
sure the author would not have allowed to remain as 
they are : here and there a little roughness or infelicity 
of expression which would pass unnoticed, or, indeed, 
be perhaps not out of place in a lecture, must conse- 
quently find its v^ay in a permanent form into the 
published work of a writer who has made for himself 
his own high place in Anglo-Irish literature. This can- 
not be helped ; but it is only fair to Canon Sheehan's 
reputation as a finished writer of English to remind the 
reader of the form in which these essays were left by 
their author. And, indeed, it is perhaps remarkable 
that the number of these evidences of lack of care and 
polish is so few. 

E. McL 



THE LITERARY LIFE^ 
I 

In accepting the invitation of this Society to read 
a paper for its members, I selected this subject — the 
Literary Life — as one that might be made not only 
interesting, but useful. Because it is one about which 
ceaseless interrogations are put from young and old 
aspirants, the fomi of question generally touching 
the feasibility of making a living by literature, or, at 
least, of attracting, ever so little, the regards of our 
fellow men. It is found that some of these queries 
are pathetic ; some, unreasonable ; some, pitiful ; 
none, for reasons I shall afterwards detail, altogether 
condemnable. The replies, given readily by those 
who have failed and those who have succeeded, are 
pitched in the same sad key of uniformity. With 
singular vmanimity they seem to warn off all aspirants 
from a dangerous and thorny path. Some of these 
sad verdicts are familiar to you, like the mournful 
lines of Dr. Johnson : 

*' You know what ills the author's life assail — 
Toil, envy, want, the patron, and the jail." 

1 A lecture delivered before the Cork Literary and Scientific 
Society. 

B 



2 THE LITERARY LIFE 

But his successors in modern times, when it is gene- 
rally presumed an author's life is happier, seem to 
repeat the same sad threnody. 

George Augustus Sala was a successful journalist. 
His last verdict is : 

" Were I a young man, I should certainly not 
adopt journalism as a profession. With very few 
exceptions the career leads eventually to premature 
old age and indigence." 

Grant Allen, who was simply omniscient, if we are 
to judge by the multiplicity of subjects that engaged 
his pen, says that " crossing-sweeping is better than 
literature." 

Gibbon, de Quincey, Scott, Trollope, Thackeray, 
may be cited as witnesses to the same effect ; and 
surely the world has always regarded these as the 
successful few. 

To a correspondent who wrote him on the subject 
Carlyle replied, ** that he had never heard a madder 
proposal. It was only one degree less foolish than if 
he were to throw himself from the top of the Monu- 
ment in the hope of flying." 

And to Dr. Crozier, who had come from Canada 
to London to practise not his profession as doctor 
but as a lesser light of Uterature, the same sage replied : 

** Na, na, that winna do. Ye'd better stick to your 
profession, young man. It's time enough to think 
of literature when you've cleared your own mind, 
and have something to say." 

And, in still more recent times, a writer, whose 
sad experience lends such pathetic and mournful 
interest to his words, writes : 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 3 

" Innumerable are the men and women now writing 
for bread, who have not the least chance of finding in 
such work a permanent livelihood. They took to 
writing, because they knew not what else to do ; or 
because the literary calling tempted them by its inde- 
pendence, and its dazzling prizes. They will hang 
on to the squalid profession, their earnings eked out 
by begging and borrowing, until it is too late for 
them to do anything else — and then ? With a life- 
time of dread experience behind me, I say that he 
who encourages any young man or woman to look 
for his living to literature, commits no less than a 
crime." 

These are sad words, wrung from lips which had 
tasted disappointment and despair. Are they borne 
out by facts and experience ? Yes ! alas ! they are 
only too true. There is no profession, whose borders 
are strewn with so many wrecks as this of literature ; 
as there is no profession for whose labours honours 
and rewards come so tardily — very often never come 
at all, or only come when it is too late. 1 know you 
might quote against me such isolated successes as 
that of Lord Macaulay, who got ;fio,ooo for his 
History of Englmid ; Mr. John Morley, who got a 
similar sum for his Life of Gladstone ; George Eliot, 
who received the same sum for Adam Bede ; Charles 
Dickens, dying worth ^60,000 ; Victor Hugo, a 
millionaire ; Marie CoreUi ! But what of Milton— 
who got five pounds for Paradise Lost ; What of 
Chatterton ? What of Goldsmith } What of Jane 
Austen ? What of Shelley — expatriated } What of 
Keats — murdered ? What of Wordsworth — ridiculed 



4 THE LITERARY LIFE 

and despised for fifty j^ears, and then crowned with 
laurels, and honoured with academic degrees, when 
his countrymen should have done penance in sack- 
cloth and ashes, and atoned for their stupid malevo- 
lence by respectful and contrite silence ? And 
Coleridge — dependent in his old age on charity ; and 
Jean Paul Richter — labouring on his immortal w^orks 
for ten years, whilst an ignorant and heedless public 
refused him bread for his wife and children. And 
Tasso, Cowper, Comte — in their madhouses ; and 
that vast army of French Parnassiens and Decadents, 
from Balzac down to Paul Verlaine and Stephen 
Mallarme, starving and shivering in the attics of the 
Ouartier Latin, and casting immortal works at the 
feet of grinding and avaricious pubHshers and a 
public which thought that the artists, who had given 
them so freely out of the opulence of their genius, 
were not worth the few vv^retched francs that would 
help to keep body and soul together. To-day, after 
the lapse of nearly a century, certain generous and 
cultivated Americans, of the same race and type that 
helped to place that beautiful monument to our 
Berkely down there in the Cathedral at Cloyne, are 
labouring to erect into a museum the house where 
Keats died in Rome. It is very generous and beau- 
tiful ; but again a symbol of the tardy recognition the 
world gives to its immortals 1 

And what shall we say of the heart-sickness, the 
disappointment, the despair, that seem to have ever 
dogged the feet of the great thinkers of the world ? 
History is black with the dread record. Even in our 
own day I know nothing more pathetic than the 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 5 

futile attempts of the authors of great works to obtain 
a little recognition ; of their futile appeals to publish- 
ers and public, to give them just one chance. Think 
of Robert Browning's Bells and Pomegranates, abso- 
lutely extinguished for tvventy years by one word — 
Balderdash — written as a careful and comprehensive 
review by some truculent idiot in Taifs Magazine ! 
x'\nd think that the same magazine had absolutely 
rejected an elaborate review by John Stuart Mill on 
the same poems ! Think of Lorna Doone hawked 
around London for years, until by the chance accident 
of the marriage of the Marquis of Lome with a Royal 
Princess, it caught the ear of the public. Think of 
Francis Thompson — a crossing-sweeper in London ! 
Think of the Riibaiyat of Omar lying perdu for years, 
until some intelligent man picked up a frayed copy 
for twopence in a London bookstall. Think of our 
own Mangan ! Oh, yes ! We who have inherited the 
treasures of Mangan 's genius ; we think what an 
honour we would have esteemed it, had we lived in 
his time, if we were privileged to give him a night's 
lodging, or a decent cloak. Too late ! Such is the 
inscription posterity, inheriting the immortal vrorks Oi 
genius, has to place with sorrow upon the tomb. 

Such, in brief, is the history of this sad but glorious 
fraternity. And we need hardly wonder that those 
who have had experience of the vicissitudes and 
changes, and been embittered by the uncertainties 
and sadness of the literary life, should warn off all 
young postulants who might be modest or humble 
enough to plead for advice. 

But it may be asked how does it happen, that with 



6 THE LITERARY LIFE 

all these terrible facts and experiences before their 
eyes, so many are yet anxious to be enrolled in this 
brotherhood of pain and sorrow ? What is the 
strange fascination which literature exercises over 
every one who has come under the spell of great 
authors ? It is quite certain that there are few men 
or women of education and culture who do not 
aspire to the glory of seeing their thoughts, senti- 
ments, and aspirations in print. The number of 
students who go to the Bar, or to medicine, or to 
business, or to engineering, is limited. The number 
of young ladies who desire to enter the learned pro- 
fessions, or to earn an independent livelihood as 
teachers, governesses, or Civil Servants, is limited. 
The number of literary aspirants is legion. 

I think the motives which underlie or create this 
fascination for letters, may be summed up thus : — 

** Admiration for great authors and the desire to 
imitate them ; a passionate love for books, and the 
ambition to create something similar ; the craving 
for what is believed to be a quiet, uneventful, unim- 
passioned life ; the fancy that a life of literature is 
absolutely free from care ; the rapture of composition ; 
the desire of fame ; the passion, so universal, for 
making money as speedily and as easily as possible." 

Some of these methods are noble and honourable ; 
some unwise and unreasonable ; some base and dis- 
honourable under certain aspects. We shall dispose 
of these latter first. 

I do not for a moment believe, or aver, that it is 
either unworthy or dishonouring to write for money 
or for fame. There is no reason whatever why an 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 7 

author should not seek to exchange his services as 
poet, novelist, essayist, historian for remuneration 
similar and equal to that which accrues to the doctor, 
the barrister, or the commercial speculator. If he 
wishes to coin his brains, and mint them into gold, 
there is neither simony nor sacrilege in doing so. 
The pen of the writer is not more sacred than the 
scalpel of the doctor or the artist's pencil. Yet there 
is a certain class of people who seem to think that it 
is quite a degradation to write for money ; and even 
the legislation about copyright, forced from the hands 
of unwilling statesmen, and but slowly and reluctantly 
improved in the course of ages, manifestly supposes 
that an author's work should be regarded as public 
property, with the right of every one to enter in and 
take his share. We hear a great deal about the rights 
of property, especially in land ; and any violation of 
those rights is stigmatised as theft or confiscation. 
It is so easy to forget that the first claim or right 
upon property should be the right of creation or 
production ; and the land is God's creation, and th« 
book is the work of the author. But the idea is that 
an author, alone of all producers, should be a public 
benefactor, labouring out of pure philanthropy for 
men's souls or pleasures, and sacrificing all human 
and personal rights by reason of his God-given 
faculty for teaching or pleasing mankind. Slowly 
and reluctantly the public is losing its grasp on this 
pleasant theory. The only section that still clings to 
it is the publishing faculty, who seem to regard the 
author as a kind of journeyman, who has no rights, 
only a few attenuated privileges ; and who is speci- 



8 THE LITERARY LIFE 

ally created by God to furnish his publisher with 
copy that will swell the yearly dividends, and help 
him to keep his carriage, or his hunting-box in Scot- 
land. And if an author has the presumption to demand 
his rights, he is generally greeted with the exclamation 
of surprise that met poor Oliver Twist, when he had 
the temerity to ask for " more." 

But where the degradation certainly comes in is 
when an author, avaricious of money or ambitious 
of fame, is prepared to use, or abuse, his talents to 
please the morbid passions of the multitude. A 
writer who appeals to passion, sensual or other ; who 
panders to religious prejudice, or turns a sacred talent 
into a political agency ; the author who sets the 
" maiden fancies wallowing in the troughs of Zolaism," 
or perverts the minds, or destroys the principles of 
the young, should meet with no mercy. Cormptio 
optimi pessima ! And the perversion of a great talent 
to base and unworthy uses is the unforgivable sin. 

So far for the principle. But can an author make 
money ? Is it a lucrative profession ? We have 
already answered that question. For the vast majority 
of writers, who hope to make a living by it, it is the 
source of unspeakable disappointment. There is 
only one safe advice for young people who are smitten 
by a passion for literature, and that is : Let it be your 
pleasure, but not your profession. It is '' an excellent 
walking-stick ; but an exceedingly bad crutch." 

Again, I cannot see why an author should not 
write for fame. Fame, or rather the thirst for fame, 
is *' the last infirmity of noble minds " ; but it is an 
honourable infirmity. And it sometimes takes a 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 9 

shape that makes it akin to the zeal of an apostle. 
For there cannot be a doubt that many writers take 
up their pens, not for gain, sordid or otherwise ; not 
for life-advancement, but purely with the desire of 
influencing the minds of many unto good — the desire 
of creating in other souls the high ideas and lofty 
principles with which they themselves are animated. 
To wish to have one's name bruited abroad in the 
press and amongst the public may be a paltry thing, 
but it is intelligible. To desire to influence the world 
by the magnetism of great ideas ; to desire to form 
even one link in the electric chain that stretches down 
through the ages, magnetising generation after gene- 
ration with thoughts that thrill and words that burn — 
this, so far from being ignoble, may assume the 
sacredness of a vocation and an apostleship. *' Cast 
forth thy Act, thy Word, into the ever-living, ever- 
working universe ; it is a seed grain that cannot die ; 
unnoticed to-day, it will be found flourishing as a 
Banyan-grove after a thousand years." 

II 

This naturally leads us to consider the higher and 
more sacred motives that influence so many in their 
choice of literature as a profession. The first of 
these I have specified as a love of books and their 
authors. The highest worship is the worship of 
imitation. Whosoever sits at the feet of Gamaliel 
seeks to become like unto Gamaliel. We like to 
create what we admire ; and whoever has a favourite 
author or authors, dreams of one day becoming a 



10 THE LITERARY LIFE 

source of light and leading unto others, as these 
authors are to himself. And behind that passion for 
imitation is the instinct that seems to pervade the 
whole universe ; that mysterious and sublime impulse 
which seems almost like an attribute of the Divinity, 
imparted in measure to finite beings — the instinct of 
creation or production. You see it everywhere : in 
the atom, in the mineral, in the cell, in the plant, in 
the animal. The same tremendous process that 
rounds a nebula into a sun, carries the pollen of a 
flower from plant to plant on the wings of a bee or 
a butterfly ; and the same mysterious instinct that 
vitalizes a seedling compelled Michael Angelo to lie 
for nights and days on the summit of a scaff'old to 
paint the frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. 
And it is the same mysterious force which evolved 
Hamlet and Macbeth that is stirring in the heart and 
brain of every young boy or girl who takes up a sheet of 
paper for the first time to write the first vapid story or 
the first immature poem. And vapid though the story 
may be, and immature the poem, there is, beside the 
creative instinct that produced it, another instinct even 
more wonderful, an innate and supersensuous instinct 
to create only what is perfect and beautiful. This 
has always seemed to me one of the greatest and most 
unfathomable mysteries of our existence. So surely 
as the crystal flakes of snow form and dissolve into 
facets of the most perfect geometrical proportions ; 
so surely as the bee creates, with unconscious art, the 
perfect hexagons of his cells ; so surely as the bird 
weaves out of garden refuse his most beautiful nest, 
and the flower develops its painted perfections ; so 



AND OTHER ESSAYS ii 

surely does the instinct of beauty and harmony ani- 
mate and inspire the youngest novice in the art of 
literature. And this passion for the beautiful, or this 
instinct for creating the beautiful, is innate in the 
human mind, as it is innate in Nature. Trelat in 
his Recherches historiqiies sur lafolie tells us that "under 
the influence of insanity an ignorant person will make 
perfect Latin verses ; a woman will sing Latin hymns 
and verses entirely unknown to her." Marce records 
the case of a young married woman, of very ordinary 
intelligence, " who, under an attack of mania, wrote 
letters to her husband, which for the eloquence and 
passionate energy of their style, might easily be placed 
beside the most fei-vent passages in the Nouvelle 
Helo't'se." Cases of dementia have been known, in 
which young men of the most ordinary capacity, and 
who in their sane moments had not the slightest 
artistic perceptions, have produced sketches, some- 
times with chalks, sometimes with pencils, sometimes 
with a red-hot iron on a piece of board, which experts 
refused to believe were not the work of supreme 
artists ; which proves, not only the existence of a 
sub-consciousness of which we are quite unaware, 
but also of a latent sense of artistic beauty, which 
only needs some kind of sudden emotion to be deve- 
loped into action. Hence I see in the crudest eflforts 
of the pen, nothing but Nature working outwards 
towards perfection. 

But I shall be met at once by the objection that all 
this instinct, like the blind instincts of Nature, leads 
but to sad and melancholy waste ; that the process 
of natural selection holds in literature as in everything 



12 THE LITERARY LIFE 

else ; that only the fittest and noblest and strong 
things survive ; and that heUce it would be much 
better for poetic young ladies to knit stockings than 
to make verses ; and for moon-struck young men 
to take up a spade or a hoe, and let the pen alone. 
True, there is that terrible and unaccountable waste 
in Nature as in Art. It was the one thing that troubled 
the intellectual serenity of Tennyson in his old age, 
and shook the little Christian faith that he possessed. 

" So careful of the type she seems. But no ! 
From scarped cliff and quarried stone 
She cries : A thousand types are gone, 
I care for nothing. All shall go ! " 

It is not the origin of things, but the utter depravity 
of Nature in sacrificing with criminal and profuse 
prodigality all that is created with so much pain 
that forms the cardinal puzzle and problem of exist- 
ence. If the elm-tree produces 300,000 seeds in a 
year, and only one seed becomes an elm ; if but one 
seed of 200,000 of the purple orchis reaches maturity, 
we pronounce Nature a shocking wastrel. But it does 
not follow that the seedling that fructified was more 
vigorous and healthful than the thousands that 
perished. Their environments were different, and 
they fell under the other instinct of destruction. And 
I say that it is quite a mistake to suppose that in 
Literature — out of the countless poems, and essays, 
and dramas, that have been evolved from the creative 
instinct of the intellect — only the best have survived. 
I do not wish to be misunderstood. I do not affirm 
that any greater epic than the Iliady any greater drama 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 13 

than Hamlet or Lear, has gone down the waste-pipes 
of time into the gulf of obHvion. But I do affirm that 
to-day countless essays are written, printed, read, and 
forgotten incomparably greater than the insolent 
platitudes of Macaulay ; and that countless poems 
are hidden and buried away in magazines" that far 
more justly entitle their authors to a niche in the 
Temple of Fame than the crudities that were written 
by the poets whom Johnson deemed worthy of a 
place in his gallery of mediocrities. Tennyson used to 
say that many thousands of lines, quite as precious 
as those he preserved, went up his chimney in clouds 
of tobacco-smoke ; and I have no doubt that many 
a fine lyric and sonnet has helped in our days the 
utilities which he anticipated for his *' mortal lullabies 
of pain " — 

" To bind a book, to Hne a box. 
Or help to curl a maiden's locks." 

What then are we to say ? This — That, inasmuch 
as it appears to be the law of Nature to create pro- 
digally, by virtue of the secret and impervious in- 
stinct that prompts creation ; and that, inasmuch as 
these creations, again obeying the behests of another 
secret and imperative law, always round to perfection, 
even though the vast proportion are doomed to wanton 
destruction, and perhaps only one solitary specimen 
of Nature's creative power survives ; so is it the law 
of Nature that the young, the hopeful, and the buoyant 
shall seek to perpetuate themselves in prose and 
verse ; and that we have no more right to check or 
destroy that instinct than we have to interfere with 
the mechanical operations that are fortunately placed 



14 THE LITERARY LIFE 

altogether beyond our control. If these pen-produc- 
tions are doomed to destruction, well, it is only again 
the law of Nature, even though we may regret it. 
If they survive, they remain *' a thing of beauty, and 
a joy for ever." 

Besides, in all this there is the eternal law of Chance. 
The same Chance that places a seedling in the beak of 
a migratory bird and bids it be carried to some 
ocean-beaten rock, there to create a luxuriant vege- 
tation, may also discover and reveal some hidden 
beauty and glory in literature. Thomas Gray owes 
his immortality to one poem ; Blanco White to one 
sonnet. There are greater poems than the Elegy, 
which never have been heard of. There are incom- 
parably greater sonnets unrecognised in the language 
than the famous sonnet on ** Night." And there is 
no writer, however humble, who may not stumble on 
an immortal line, and find a discriminating critic to 
recognise it. There is a systole and diastole in all 
human affairs : and the idols of this generation may 
strew the roads of the next. At one time all Europe 
went mad over Byron ; and it was seriously debated 
in Oxford whether Byron or Shelley were the greater 
poet. No one would dream of asking the question 
now. The time may come when Shakespeare will be 
dethroned ; for there is a good deal of lying about 
Shakespeare. And the slaves of to-day may be the 
kings of to-morrow. 

This leads me quite naturally to the next motive I 
have particularized as an attraction to the literary 
life — the rapture of compositiom ! 

Now it is quite true that for the most part authors 
have to whip and spur their brains until the jaded or 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 15 

helpless faculties stir themselves reluctantly to work. 
Very often authors have to write against time to com- 
plete an engagement or to meet the season when books 
are most in demand. This is the drudgery of lite- 
rature ; and such work, under such circumstances, 
is mostly poor and transitory. But there come 
moments in the life of every author — at least, of every 
author of distinction, when they seem to be lifted 
above the earth, and to see a sudden opening in the 
firmament, reveahng glimpses of Heaven. Such 
moments of ecstasy are few and intermittent. They 
cannot be foreseen or anticipated. They do not 
come and go with the rhythmic swing of the sea ; 
but capriciously and at unexpected times, flashing 
sudden lights on the mind, and as quickly snapping 
and extinguishing them. In such moments not only 
are worlds revealed ; but with the inspiration comes 
also the language fitted to reveal it — the happy ex- 
pression — the one word out of a million that adapts 
itself with a precision that no mere Art could discover. 
I feel quite sure that Shelley experienced this when 
he wrote his immortal Ode to the West Wind, and 
stumbled upon such lines as : 

" The blue Mediterranean, where he lay 
Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams 
Beside a pumice isle in Baia^'s bay ; " 
and : 

" Thou, 
In whose path the Atlantic's level powers 
Cleave themselves into chasms, while far below 
The sea-blooms and the oozy woods which bear 
The sapless foHage of the Ocean, know 
Thy voice and suddenly grow grey with fear.*' 



i6 THE LITERARY LIFE 

No mere cudgelling of brains could ever elicit that 
line : 

** Beside a pumice isle in Baiai's bay," 
or that expression : 

" The sapless foliage of the Ocean." 
And when Keats in his immortal sonnet on Chap- 
man's Homer wrote : 

" Then felt I like some watcher of the skies 
When a new planet swims into his ken ; 
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes 

He stared at the Pacific — and all his men 
Looked at each other with a wild surmise 
Silent, upon a peak in Darien," 

or in his Ode to a Nightingale, broke into what some 
consider the two most perfect lines in all EngHsh 
poetry : 

** Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn," 

he must have experienced something like the levi- 
tation of spirituaHsts, and floated in the air. 

And when Carlyle said to his wife, on the comple- 
tion of his French Revolution : " There ! They 
have not had for many years a book that came so 
flaming hot from the heart of any man." It was his 
rapture at having perfected an immortal work, and 
an ecstasy of defiance to a heedless or stupid public. 

Ill 

But, in the life of men of genius, these, alas ! are 
transitory, sudden, intermittent emotions. As a rule, 
authors, especially of the higher type, are very un- 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 17 

happy mortals. Whether it be the perpetual mental 
strain producing nervousness and irritability ; or 
whether it be the disappointment of baffled hopes ; 
or whether it be penury, want, or neglect, that shall 
be alleged as causes, it is quite certain that a hterary 
life is mostly an unhappy one. Sudden raptures 
mean chronic depression ; and the ecstasies of a 
moment scarcely counterbalance the infelicities of a 
lifetime. If it had pleased God to give you a brain., 
the grey cortex of which is so dull and unelastic that 
no external impression will strike a spark from it, 
thank God for the favour ! Or if you are endowed 
with such faculties that you can gaze for hours stupidly 
into the fire ; or lean over a village bridge and watch 
the waters curling beneath ; or consume infinite 
tobacco, whilst engaged in the laudable object of 
killing man's worst enemy — Time — thank God for 
it 1 But if you are dov/ered with that nervous irri- 
t^jihty called genius, throwing out thoughts from 
the brain as swiftly as the cr}^stal drops are flung 

from a mill-wheel ah, well, you may know, from 

time to tim_e, what is meant by the ecstasy and rap- 
ture of composition ; but you will never know what 
happiness means in this life. '* Where thou beholdest 
Genius," says Goethe, in Tasso, *' there thou be- 
holdest, too, the martyr's crown." ^ 

Hence, unquestionably, a literary life is for the 
most part an unhappy Hfe ; because, if you have 
genius, you must suffer the penalty of genius ; and, 
if you have only talent, there are so many cares and 

1 du das Genie erblickst 
Erblickst du aiich Zugleich die Martyrkrome. 



i8 THE LITERARY LIFE 

worries incidental to the circumstances of men of 
letters, as to make life exceedingly miserable. Besides 
the pangs of composition, and the continuous dis- 
appointment which a true artist feels at his inability 
to reveal himself, there is the ever-recurring difficulty 
of gaining the public ear. Young writers are buoyed 
up by the hope and the belief that they have only to 
throw that poem at the world's feet to get back in 
return the laurel-crown ; that they have only to push 
that novel into print to be acknowledged at once as 
a new light in literature. You can never convince a 
young author that the editors of magazines and the 
publishers of books are a practical body of men, who 
are by no means fanatically anxious about placing 
the best literature before the public. Nay, that, for 
the most part, they are mere brokers, who conduct 
their business on the hardest lines of a Profit and 
Loss account. 

But supposing your book fairly launched, its perils 
are only beginning. You have to run the gauntlet 
of the critics. To a young author, again, this seems 
to be as terrible an ordeal as passing down the files 
of Sioux or Comanche Indians, each one of whom is 
thirsting for your scalp. When you are a little older, 
you will find that criticism is not much more serious 
than the bye-play of clowns in a circus, when they 
beat around the ring the victim with bladders slung 
at the end of long poles. A time comes in the life of 
every author when he regards critics as comical, 
rather than formidable, and goes his way unheeding. 
But there are sensitive souls that yield under the 
chastisement, and, perhaps after suffering much silent 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 19 

torture, abandon the profession of the pen for ever. 
Keats, perhaps, is the saddest example of a fine 
spirit hounded to death by savage criticism ; because, 
whatever his biographers may aver, that furious 
attack of Gifford and Terry undoubtedly expedited 
his death. But no doubt there are hundreds who 
suffer keenly from hostile and unscrupulous criticism ; 
and who have to bear that suffering in silence, because 
it is a cardinal principle in literature that the most 
unwise thing in the world for an author is to take 
public notice of criticism in the way of defending 
himself. Silence is the only safeguard, as it is the 
only dignified protest against insult and offence. 

Again, although there is a good deal of good nature 
and fraternal feeling, and a sense of camaraderie 
amongst authors, there is also sometimes '' war on 
Parnassus." I do not know anything more painful and 
humiliating than to see a beloved poet or a worshipped 
author, descend into the arena of vulgar controversy. 
It is a dethronement of our idols that is akin to loss 
of faith. Hence, the life of a poet should never be 
written. The world should be satisfied with the 
legacy of his immortal works. Hence is Shakespeare 
happy, in that we know practically nothing about his 
life. It is not pleasant to see our great saints of lite- 
rature toppling down to our feet in some wretched 
wordy squabble. I think Tennyson acted most 
wisely in excluding from the collected edition of his 
poems his terrible and scathing reply to Lord Lytton 
in the New Timo?i. Thackeray is not raised in our 
esteem by his resentment against Charlotte Bronte 
for his supposed likeness to Rochester. Nor does 



20 THE LITERARY LIFE 

he come well out of his dispute with Edmuud Yates, 
although, as a man, he has left behind him a most 
noble character for magnanimity and lordly munifi- 
cence. I remember, after reading Swinburne's 
exchanges of compliments with Eric Mackay, about 
a fulsome poem published by the latter in the World, 
and which ended in an attorney's letter and a cry for 
the pohce, I rubbed my eyes and asked myself : Is 
this the same man that wrote the noble choruses in 
Atalanta, and the sublime elegy on the Death of 
Barry Cormvall? Mr. Froude, an unreliable his- 
torian, but an accomplished litterateur, did wisely in 
never answering the fierce onslaughts that were made 
on him and his works, especially by his brother- 
historian, Freeman. But his reputation was not 
served by his post-mortem revelations, in which he 
says with acrimony : 

" I never resented anything more than that article 
in the Quarterly. I felt as if I w^re tied to a post, 
and a mule was brought up to kick me. Some day 
I think I shall take my reviewers all round, and give 
them a piece of my mind. I acknowledge to find real 
mistakes in the whole work of 12 volumes — about 
twenty trifling slips, equivalent to i's not dotted, and 
fs not crossed ; and that is all the utmost malignity 
has discovered. Every one of the rascals, too, has 
made a dozen blunders of his own while detecting 
one of mine .... You may have seen Free- 
man's papers in the Contemporary. You will be glad 
to hear that he is changing his mind on the Eastern 
question. That I should be on the same side con- 
vinces him that he must be wrong." 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 21 

I quote this to show how unwise it is for aggrieved 
authors to lift the veil on their feehngs, and compel 
the small world to ask, how such anger can find a 
place in celestial minds ? 

But it proves that the literary life is not all sunshine. 
I spoke of the eternal and universal law of repro- 
duction. But there is the counter instinct, alas ! 
also eternal and universal, and only too well developed 
in the human heart — the instinct of attack and 
destruction ; and this always finds its object in what- 
ever is most fair and beautiful. Weeds have no 
parasites. These latter find their way to the under 
leaf of rose and lily. 

I think that here, too, may be found a remote reason 
for the profound pessimism that seem.s to be a cha- 
racteristic of all great geniuses. The little we know 
of Shakespeare, his temporal prosperity, and his placid 
bust, seem to mark him as an exception. But no ! 
The man who wrote Timon and Lear, and the sad 
words about adversity and ingratitude, took but a 
sombre view of life and humanity ; whilst running 
through the golden web of his Sonnets is a dark line, 
denoting the profound depression and melancholy of 
his character. Milton's solemn sadness is everywhere 
in his poems. Wordsworth expresses his convictions 
in such lines as : 

" The still, sad music of humanity," 
and 

*' The burden and 
The weight of all this unintelligible world." 



22 THE LITERARY LIFE 

Byron was a misanthrope for ever railing against his 
kind. Shelley, in the lines : 

*' Yet, now despair itself is mild 
Even as the winds and waters are, 
I could lie down like a tired child 
And weep aw^ay the life of care : 
Which I have borne, and yet must bear," 

typifies the same. 

I need not quote Carlyle or Tennyson — the two 
saddest souls of modern times ; nor George Eliot ; 
nor the host of great thinkers, who, having set out on 
the journey of life with buoyant hopes and aspirations, 
closed their eyes on this world, like the ancient pro- 
phets, with a zioe upon their lips* 

But, besides the petty annoyances and grinding 
cares inseparable from the literary life, there was 
another cause for their pessimism. It was this : 

All great thinkers live and move on a high plane 
of thought. It is only there they can breathe freely. 
It is only in contact with spirits like themselves they 
can live harmoniously and attain that serenity which 
comes from ideal companionship. The studies of all 
great thinkers must range along the highest altitudes 
of human thought. I cannot remember the name of 
any illum.inative genius who did not drink his inspira- 
tions from the fountains of ancient Greek and Hebrew- 
writers ; or such among the moderns as were pupils 
in ancient thought, and, in turn, became masters in 
their ov/n. I have always thought that the strongest 
argument in favour of the Baconian theory was, that 
no man, however indubitable his genius, could have 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 23 

written the plays and sonnets that have come down 
to us under Shakespeare's name who had not the 
Hberal education of Bacon. How this habit of inter- 
course with the gods makes one impatient of mere 
men. The magnificent ideals that have ever haunted 
the human mind, and given us our highest proofs of 
a future immortality by reason of the impossibility 
of their fulfilment here, are splintered into atoms by 
contact with life's realities. Hence comes our sublime 
discontent. You will notice that your first sensation 
after reading a great book is one of melancholy and 
dissatisfaction. The ideas, sentiments, expressions, 
are so far beyond those of ordinary working life that 
you cannot turn aside from one to the other without 
an acute sensation and consciousness of the contrast. 
And the principles are so lofty, so superhuman that 
it is a positive pain, if once you become imbued 
with them, to come down and mix in the squalid 
surroundings of ordinary humanity. It may be 
spiritual or intellectual pride that is engendered on 
this high plane — intellectual Hfe. But whatever it is, 
it becomes inevitable. An habitual meditation on 
the vast problems that underHe human life, and are 
knit into human destinies — thoughts of immortality, 
of the Httleness of mere man, of the greatness of man's 
soul, of the splendours of the universe that are in- 
visible to the ordinary traffickers in the street, as the 
vastness of St. Peter's is to the spider that weaves 
her web in a corner of the dome — these things do 
not fit men to understand the average human being, 
or tolerate with patience the sordid wretchedness of 
the unregenerate masses, Faust in his midnight study 



24 THE LITERARY LIFE 

was a perplexed man, because he was always pursuing 
the phantoms of the Unknown. Had he touched 
earth, and then gone back to his books and alembics, 
he would have become a cynic and a pessimist. He 
remained on the lower levels, enjoyed all the lower 
pleasures, suffered all the lower pains, and all the 
disillusion that comes from contact with humanity. 
You cannot come down from the society of Plato 
without being slightly disgusted with John Anderson ; 
nor can you descend from " the sacred everlasting 
calm " of the immortal spirits of our race without 
suffering irritation at the petty, frivolous, and stupid 
things that seem to occupy nine-tenths of the time of 
some of your acquaintance. And when you draw 
aside and watch this swirling, turbulent tide of 
humanity, carrying with it the straws and mud and 
refuse of the world , it is not easy to take a hopeful or 
sanguine view of the future of the race. It is easy 
to understand, therefore, why such thinkers fly to 
the solitude of their own thoughts, or the silent com- 
panionship of the immortals ; and if they do care to 
present their views in prose or verse to the world, 
that these views take a sombre and melancholy setting 
from '* the pale cast of thought " in which they were 
engendered. I know but one exception to this uni- 
versal scepticism — the case of Robert Browning. 
He was, apparently, a childish, guileless optimist, 
*' believing all things, hoping all things, loving all 
things." But I explain the singular fact by the theory 
that Browning, unHke all his great contemporaries, 
was a society man. He gave as much time to mortals 
as to the immortals ; and the contrast, therefore, was 
not so painful or pronounced. 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 25 



IV 



Perhaps 3'ou will be surprised, after this enumera- 
tion of the many trials and drawbacks in the literary 
life, when I draw the strange conclusion that I most 
earnestly recommend it to those whose tastes lead in 
that direction ; but always with the condition that it 
is regarded not as a profession or means towards 
an independent livelihood. And I recommend it for 
a threefold reason : First, as a resource and pleasure 
in those hours of depression or ennui that come to 
all ; second, as a refining and exalting influence ; 
third, as a possible Apostolate. 

There is certainly no greater or more lasting 
mental resource than a taste for letters or the literary 
life. Music palls upon many ; social pleasures are 
not always available or desirable. But the art of com- 
position, once acquired, is never lost, and never 
wearies ; and you can pursue it without extraneous 
aid and in that solitude that is so dear to those who 
try to think deeply. " I know no greater pleasure," 
wrote Jean Paul, " and few more refining, than for 
a young man to open his portfolio, and walking up 
and down his room, strive to spoil that virgin page 
with words that may be immortal." And if you are 
fortunate enough to get into print, so much the better. 

It seems to me that Reading Circles or Guilds in 
our chief towns and cities might help materially, not 
only the cultivation of literary tastes, but the calling 
or vocation to a literary life. Such Circles exist, and 
are productive of much good, in all the great cities of 



26 THE LITERARY LIFE 

America ; and are carried on through the summer 
months in the summer schools at Lake Champlain 
and elsewhere. At these meetings not only are the 
great classics discussed and read, but also individual 
efforts on the part of members are encouraged by 
being brought forward, and eagerly criticised. It is 
quite possible that with that sarcastic vein that runs 
through the Irish temperament, and in the absence 
of that gentle, serious tone that makes so much for 
harmony, that a game of bridge or bezique might be 
better adapted to sustain these amenities that go so 
far to make our social intercourse tolerable. But it 
would be a decided impulse towards literary produc- 
tion if there could be established in our midst a few 
little coteries where a young author might be heard 
before coming in front of the footlights. I am aware 
that philosophers who have studied the intricacies of 
human nature think otherwise. Leopardi says, that 
the reading of compositions is *' a social scourge, a 
public calamity i and adds a new terror to life " ; and 
he quotes the opinion of a learned friend, who said 
that if it be true that the Empress Octavia fainted 
away while Virgil was reading to her the sixth canto 
of his JEneidy we may be sure that her swoon was 
caused, not by the poet's pathetic allusion to the fate 
of Marcellus, but from sheer fatigue and weariness 
of the poet's reading. And it is no violent stretch of 
imagination to suppose that in a witty city like this, 
some young censor might, like Diogenes of old, lean 
over the shoulder of some unhappy reader and exclaim 
as he saw the blank spaces at the bottom of the page 
" Courage, my friends, I see land at last ! " 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 



27 



But if it is a daring thing to suggest the formation 
of Reading Guilds in our midst I am about to do a 
desperate thing in suggesting, as an incentive to a 
literary life, the establishment of a purely literary 
journal. We are so deluged with journals and reforms, 
and methods of reform, that I am sure at the very 
suggestion you will cast up your eyes and say, "Yet 
another ! " But on the one hand, there cannot be a 
doubt of the steady decadence, and even extinction, 
of these literary tastes in our midst, which originated 
fifty or sixty years ago in the hedge schools, and which, 
helped by the tone of the public journals, constituted 
quite an Augustine age in our literature. On the other 
hand, it is quite useless to look to our schools or 
educational system for such a revival of tastes as 
would place us on a level with the cultured classes 
of other nations. But no one can deny that the Hterary 
talent requisite for working successfully a great 
literary journal is available in Ireland. One Dublin 
magazine, if it were limited to purely literary, scien- 
tific, or artistic subjects, would have all the elements 
of a great literary organ. And a small quarto paper, 
published some years ago in Dublin, commanded, it 
was quite clear, the highest literary talent amongst 
us ; but it w^as steered, from the day it was launched, 
right on the rocks and shoals of religious and political 
controversy, and, of course, suff'ered shipwreck ! 
But I suppose I am a dreamer of dreams, and we shall 
let it pass. 

I hold in the second place that a literary life is 
necessarily a life of refinement and culture. I cannot 
see how it can be otherwise. I cannot see how any 



28 THE LITERARY LIFE 

man or woman, living habitually with the prophets 
and seers of the race, can descend wiUingly to the 
lower levels of sense or self-interest. And I again 
repeat that no man can attain conspicuous literary 
success, or become a light to his generation, unless 
he has sat an obedient pupil at the feet of the great 
masters in his art. I know you may quote against me 
certain poets and philosophers who preached or sang 
divinely and lived diaboHcally. But que voulez-vous ? 
The divOy who at ten o'clock, in yonder theatre, is 
raising you to the third heavens on the wings of her 
voice, v/ill sup at twelve on oysters and champagne. 
You cannot, alas ! dissever the human from the divine. 
But I cannot see how anyone who has been reading, 
say, the Dialogues of Plato ; or who has just finished 
that chapter, " The Everlasting Year," in the Third 
Book of Sartor Resartus, can be greedy at a restaurant 
or can join in a circle of scandal, or cheat his neigh- 
bour at whist. Of course there is the danger of 
ultra-refinement, of looking down upon " the man in 
the street." But this danger is remote, except, as 
I have said, in the pessimism of great authors. Most 
others will come down from Olympus with only 
Infinite Pity in their hearts for poor, sordid, struggling 
humanity. 

Lastly (and I am sure you are as well pleased with 
the word, as when you hear in Church, " One word 
more, and I have done "), there is the Apostolate of 
Literature. It is a subject that might be developed 
not only into a Lecture, but into a Book ; and I am 
acting unwisely in giving it but a paragraph at the 
end of a paper. But I shall address myself only to 
one aspect of it, 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 29 

I feel that I am contravening the opinions of each 
and every section into whicli modern Ireland is 
divided when I say, that in the work of nation-build- 
ing the chief requisite would be architects of large, 
liberal ideas, gathered from the w^orld's chief thinkers, 
and assimilated so perfectly that they would be 
manifested in iirmer judgments, wider speculations, 
more generous sympathies, and larger toleration than 
we find in our little world of to-day. And I do not 
know v/here that knowledge and experience are to be 
acquired, unless at the feet of " the masters of those 
who know," in every age, of every country and clime. 
And whilst I am very proud of being an ardent propa- 
gandist of the GaeHc League, I cannot sympathise 
with those who think, I am sure honestly 
and sincerely, that w^e should only read Irish 
books, and write on Irish subjects ; and who 
speak with some contempt of Anglo-Irish writers 
and cosmopolitan patriots. If such ideas had 
been accepted in other countries, I wonder where 
the literary glories, nay, the political triumphs 
of England, France, Germany, Spain, and Italy 
would be to-day ? If Shakespeare had not ran- 
sacked the world for subjects, where would be Julius 
Ccesar and Coriolanus^ Hamlet and Othello, The Mer- 
chant of Venice^ Romeo and Juliet ? If Milton had 
limited his ideas within the British seas, we would 
not have had Paradise Lost or Samson Agonistes, 
Byron, Shelley, and Keats would be represented by 
one sonnet or lyric and an angry diatribe. Swinburne 
would not exist, except in some political harangue. 
If Tasso, Dante, Alfieri, had follow^ed a similar prin- 



30 THE LITERARY LIFE 

ciple, Italian literature would be almost limited to 
Petrarch's Sonnets. And if the great French trage- 
dians had not gone to antiquity for subjects, the 
names of Racine and Corneille would be practically 
unknown. In a word, you would blot out the world's 
literature if you only regarded what was purely racial 
or national in the productions of the great masters of 
literature, in every age, and country, and clime. 

Nor is it reasonable that it should be otherwise. 
There is a certain fund of original thought stored up 
in the written archives, the unwritten traditions, and 
the daily habitudes of every race. And if thought is 
the parent of thought, and language its vehicle, I think 
that that nation would soon be starved which would 
limit itself to the creations of its own children. Even 
if it be said that home thoughts are the best thoughts, 
well, they will become more valuable by being ap- 
praised by comparison with the ideas of others. But 
certainly in our days, when we may be on the eve 
of tremendous changes, I would wish for systems of 
education, based on broader principles than we now 
possess ; and as that seems almost beyond the horizon 
of our hopes, I would wish to see literary tastes more 
widely extended and more liberally developed, to the 
end that, with larger views and freer sympathies, we 
might be able to view the present condition of our 
country, as it were, in the perspective, the true per- 
spective of solid judgment, and unbiassed and un- 
prejudiced sympathies. And as we cannot, as a nation, 
go outside ourselves without courting self-destruc- 
tion, the only thing that seems possible and feasible 
is to take our stand, side by side, with the master- 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 31 

thinkers of the ages, and try and look at ourselves 
with their eyes. I think if we did so we should see 
many things in a different light from that in which 
they ROW appear ; and that our views of men and 
their institutions, their law^s and habits, their history, 
and their present political and economic conditions, 
their relations to each other, and to the world v/ith 
which they are brought into contact ; their social, 
religious, and political antipathies, narrow- ed and con- 
centrated in the focus of great cosmic principles 
would seem to us capable of much emendation ; that 
is, if we were really prepared to emerge from the 
toils of factions and parties, and walk in the broader 
way of free and unfettered principle. And as educa- 
tion cannot come down to the masses of the people, 
and there is no pedagogue system so wide as to 
embrace a whole nation, nothing seems to remain for 
us in Ireland but an apostolate of Literature, where 
books will be our University, and each man a teacher 
unto himself. 

I do not despair of seeing yet in Ireland — in its 
populous centres, which ought to become luminous 
points, radiating light all around ; and its quiet, 
country places, where all the surroundings are favour- 
able to peaceful thought and meditation — large 
circles of thinkers, devoted to literature, and science, 
and art, and insensibly leading up the masses of the 
people to their own regions of high thought, and 
refined and exalted sentiment. I feel sure that outside 
the storm-belt, the torrid zone of political life, there 
must be many of both sexes who desire to live more 
gentle lives in the temperate regions where passion 



32 THE LITERARY LIFE 

has no place, where there is no intriguing, no states- 
manship (as the euphemism has it), no contention, 
except the academic striving after Uterary success, or 
a calm and passionless debate about a point of art, or 
a subtlety of expression. Such a literary, shall I say 
ideal, world must not expect recognition. Nothing 
is recognised in Ireland except what is entangled in 
the meshes of politics. The last trump of doom would 
sound before we would think of putting up a monu- 
ment to such a thinker as Bishop Berkeley. It is quite 
different with other nationalities, who look at things 
with *' larger, other eyes " than ours. The grfcat, 
generous American people do not ask if a dead poet 
were a Democrat or a Republican, whether he was 
enmeshed in the toils of Tammany or other political 
organisation. They only ask : Was he a Poet ? and 
they recognise his worth accordingly. The great 
German nation acknowledge as the " bright, par- 
ticular star *' of its firmament, Goethe, who w^as 
decidedly unpatriotic in our sense of the word. It 
would seem difficult to defend the man who was so 
absolutely indifferent to the fate of his country during 
the Napoleonic invasion that he was engrossed in 
fossil-hunting at the very time that the battle of 
Zena was raging outside the walls of his dwelling. 
But, because he was the supreme artist and inter- 
preter of his nation, he has obtained the first place in 
the Temple of Fame, which is so well and honourably 
crowded with the effigies of artists and men of letters, 
scientists and politicians, statesmen and orators, in 
the Fatherland. 

I cannot recall just now any public recognition of 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 33 

genius in Ireland — of genius as such, and apart from 
political services — except that most brilliant and 
honourable episode in the history of Trinity College, 
when, on the 15th August, 1835, in the presence of 
three hundred members of the British Association, 
and all the Fellows of Trinity, assembled in the 
dining-hall of the College, a young Professor and 
Fellow, of twenty-seven years, William Rowan Hamil- 
ton, was suddenly summoned by the Viceroy and 
knighted, " not," as his Excellency said, *' as con- 
ferring a distinction, but as setting the royal and 
national mark on a distinction already acquired by 
genius and labour." 

But this is not the point. I am contemplating a 
condition of things where literature will be pursued 
for its own sake, and for the effects it must necessarily 
have on those who are happy to be its votaries. I do 
not yet despair of seeing a shelf of books in every 
labourer's cottage in the land. I do not despair of 
seeing our artisans seeking their evening recreation 
and their Sunday pleasure in the company of great 
thinkers and sweet singers. I hope I may see the 
time when one could say " Dante " or " Browning," 
without inducing the dread silence of an earthquake 
panic in the higher circles of the land ; and when 
one might say " Turner "or " BotticeUi " without 
incurring the suspicion of affectation or pedantry. 
The day may be remote ; when it comes it will usher 
in a Golden Age, fraught with vast possibilities for 
the social, religious, and political welfare of Ireland. 
For our social advancement — inasmuch as it may 
raise the tone of daily life and bring an atmosphere 

D 



34 THE LITERARY LIFE 

of refinement and gentleness where now there is too 
much persiflage and frivolity. For our religious well- 
being — because the deeper we read the stronger 
becomes our hold on those cardinal dogmas and 
principles that are common to all Christian creeds. 
** The contemplative Atheist," says Lord Bacon, '* is 
rare. A little philosophy incHneth man's mind to 
Atheism ; but depth in philosophy bringeth men's 
minds around to religion," For our political welfare — 
for a commonwealth founded by a people of large 
knowledge, trained understanding, quickened per- 
ceptions, and solid principles, that will not sway to 
every wind of speech, will have elements of stability 
and permanency, with " Freedom slowly broadening 
down, from precedent to precedent." 

As yet we live by hope : but we must work on, 
humbly and hopefully straining after an ideal, doing 
our duty in the narrowest social and parochial sur- 
roundings, and trusting that an aggregate of effort 
will achieve success in more spacious times and more 
gentle surroundings than it is our lot to experience 
at present. 



OPTIMISM 
II 

IN LITERATURE 

The clever agent of a circus-troupe— sent in 
advance with bills and flaming posters to excite the 
curiosity of the young, and it may be, of the old — 
generally has some latent charm, hidden away under 
some obscure and unknown phrase, to stimulate all 
the more the curiosity of his future clients, and assure 
himself of their sixpences. Somewhat in the same 
way I was awfully tempted to call this lecture by some 
mysterious name, so that, if you were not tempted 
to come for the lecturer's sake, you might come 
through that universal and insatiable little vice — 
curiosity. And I had no trouble in finding such a 
phrase ; for, as Robert Browning is my ideal of an 
optimist poet — indeed the only optimist poet of our 
generation ; and as Robert Browning's verses are 
synonymous with everything that is obscure, involved, 
or — to use a word that has a special interest at present 
through Dr. Jameson and Oom Paul — outlandish, I 
had only to open this Uttle duodecimo volume and 
presto ! here is the word, ready, cut, and dry — " Pippa 
passes." Not to keep you too long on the tenter- 

35 



36 THE LITERARY LIFE 

hooks of expectation, let me say at once, that Pippa 
is a little Italian girl, working in a silk factory in Asolo, 
and Pippa has got a holiday. It is a rare event ; and 
she is determined to enjoy it to the uttermost. She 
will not squander a wavelet of it ; no, not " one mite 
of her twelve hours' treasure." Now Pippa, like all 
Italians, can sing ; and she goes around the vine-clad 
hills, and down the singing valleys, with a carol on 
her lips, and lightness in her heart ; and the burden 
of her song is this : 

The year's at the spring, 
And day's at the morn ; 
Morning's at seven ; 
The hill-side's dew-pearled ; 
The lark's on the wing ; 
The snail's on the thorn ; 
God's in his heaven — 
All's right with the world ! 

Now, it happens, as she goes along, four distinct 
groups of persons, unseen by her — four groups, who 
are contemplating either crimes or critical balances in 
their lives, are so affected by her simple artless song, 
full of hope and trust, that they pause — some stricken 
by remorse ; others, appalled at the step they were 
about to take. And all, touched by the simple faith 
of this child, are moved to change into better and 
hopefuller things ; and consciences seared with sin, 
and hearts hardened in iniquity, spring towards better 
and loftier things by the tender faith of this guileless 
child. 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 37 

Now the burden of her song : — 

God's in his heaven^ 
AlVs right with the world, 

is the burden of al! Browning*s poetry. He is essen- 
tially — Browning the optimist. '* All's right with the 
world." This note runs through all his poems. In 
Nature, in Man, in Science, in Social life — every- 
where, there is either some good, or some tendency 
towards final good. He will not see gloom anywhere ; 
arid should a passing cloud darken his sunlight, he 
looks only at the silver lining. You remember the 
melancholy of Tennyson : and how he made the 
lonely mere, the sombre sky, the cold grey stones of 
the sea, etc., typify his own sombre spirit. Browning 
will not have this. 

'' The lark 
Soars up and up, shivering for very joy ; 
Afar the ocean sleeps ; white fishing gulls 
Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe 
Of nested limpets ; savage creatures seek 
Their loves in wood and plain — and God renews 
His ancient rapture ! " 

The same spirit pervades all his poems. Where 
others spell failure, despair, despondency. Browning 
spells success, hope, and that lofty elevation of spirit 
that passes from mere human joy to the highest 
dreams of inspiration. Of course there are flaws in 
the handiwork of creation ; but they only show the 
grace and beauty of the rest of the work, and they 
in turn will be filled up and polished into perfect- 
ness. There are discords in the music, but they only 



38 THE LITERARY LIFE 

emphasise the harmony ; and life, with all its sorrows, 
is very sweet and good, and a gift from Heaven, and 
can be rounded into perfect form by our own efforts, 
that is, if we are generous, hopeful, and true. 

In strange contradiction to all this is the melan- 
choly, the despair, the pessimism, that is the knoteey- 
of all other philosophers and poets. And, as I have 
here introduced a new word, let me define it, or rather, 
let me define my contradictories. Optimism is the 
theory that, " all that is, is right," that it is a glorious 
world, full of all fine possibilities, and that mankind 
is ever moving onward, onward, to the goal of perfect 
happiness. Pessimism, on the other hand, is the sad 
and terrible doctrine, that life is, at best, a miserable 
business, to be terminated as soon as possible by 
annihilation ; that all this thing called progress is 
really retrogression, and that the sooner it is all over 
the better. Of course, this dismal teaching was known 
to the philosophers of old ; but in our century, it has 
permeated all literature, the poem, the novel, the 
historical work, the treatise on philosophy ; and its 
chief apostles were Schofenhauer and Hartmann, in 
Germany ; and a poet, named l/copardi, in Italy. 
One, however, could be disposed to forgive and forget 
these idle dreamers, but the evil theory has infiltrated 
down into the lives and souls of men, and made miser- 
able very beautiful and lofty spirits, whose words and 
deeds have been, instead of a gospel of humanity, a 
sad legacy of the untruthfulness of despair. It runs 
like a black warp through all Carlyle's philosophy. 
'* England consists," he says, '' of thirty million people 
— mostly fools." And such expressions as everlasting 
falsities and negations, want of verity in public men, 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 39 

wind bags, and all the rest of the intolerable coarseness 
of a poor, diseased mind, which the world will have 
us believe was a philosophic one, forces itself on you 
at everv^ page, and makes you believe at last that if 
ever there was a sham philosopher it was Carlyle ; 
and if ever there was cant and humbug it is in the 
twenty odd volumes which a misappHed industry has 
left the world. You will find the same in all his 
successors— in CHfford, Spencer, Martineau. They 
all set out with the original faith — that science means 
progress, and that the whole race is moving onward 
and upward to perfection. Then the disillusion comes 
with experience ; and when the zeal and heat of youth 
is over, it gives place to the blackness of despair. 

I think I could forgive this in the philosophers. 
But how can you pardon it in the poets— the world's 
singers and prophets ? What a frightful deordination 
it is, that they, whose music should Hft up the weary 
heart of humanity, sing but to depress it, and bring 
into the lives of men not the songs of gladness and 
hope, but the threnodies of anguish and despair. And 
despair, despair, is the dominant note in all the grand 
organ-music of the nineteenth century. As I have 
said of the philosophers, so do I say of the poets. No 
matter what songs of gladness burst from their lips 
in the morning of their lives, it soon dies away into 
one melancholy monotone of sadness and regret. 
You might forgive Tennyson that lovely lyric : — 

*' Break, break, break 
On thy cold grey stones, O Sea, 
But the tender grace of a day that is dead 
Will never come back to me." 



40 THE LITERARY LIFE 

But how can you forgive him for these : — 

" There lives more faith in honest doubt, 
Believe me, than in half the creeds." 

Or this : — 

** Sooner or later I too may take the print 
Of the golden age — why not ? I have neither hope 

nor trust ; 
May make my heart as a mill-stone, set my face as 

a flint ; 
Cheat and be cheated, and die ; who knows ? we 

are ashes and dust." 

And if you protest and say : He rose above all that, 
even in that poem from which you have quoted 
(" Maud "), and wound up his awful phillipics 
against society by declaring : 

** It is better to fight for the good than rail at the 

ill; 
I have felt with my native land. I am one with 

my kind ; 
I embrace the purpose of God, and the doom 

assigned." 

Yet he retracted again in his extreme old age, and 
passed his final sentence of eternal reprobation 
against humanity in the very last extended poem 
which he wrote. 

The same is true in even a more intense sense of 
a still more delicate and refined nature — Matthew 
Arnold. Many more modern critics will place his 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 41 

name even higher than that of Tennyson ; and it is 
more true of his poetry than of Tennyson's that one 
long wail of sadness runs through it all. In that well- 
known poem Dover Beach ^ he, too, makes the eternal 
sea re-echo his own despair : — 

" The sea of faith 
Was once, too, at the full, and round earth's shore 
Lay like the folds of a bright girdle furled. 
But now I only hear 
Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar. 
Retreating to the breath 

Of the night-wind, down the vast edges drear 
And naked shingles of the world. 

" Let us be true 
To one another ! for the world, which seems 
To lie before us like a land of dreams 
So various, so beautiful, so new. 
Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light, 
Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain ; 
And we are here, as on a darkling plain 
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and fight 
Where ignorant arms clash by night." 

And so on, through pages of " most musical, most 
melancholy verse." 

Of course I have not quoted Byron, who was a 
professed pessimist ; nor Swinburne, who tries to 
infuse into his poems a Greek lightness and joy, and 
would have succeeded but that the curse of Paganism 
is on all he wrote, and his pages are floating into the 
waters of Lethe. Nor do I quote John Ruskin, who.. 



42 THE LITERARY LIFE 

as you know, thinks we are all rushing, on the wings 
of modern science, to certain damnation. Neither 
shall I mention any of our modern novelists, but to 
say, that if any lingering doubt remained in the minds 
of men, that our literature is also in a state of de- 
cadence, I need only quote Trilby and the far worse 
abominations that pour forth from men and, alas ! 
women-novelists, until one is inclined to believe that 
this awful flood of prurient literature will sweep away 
every old and venerated landmark of decency and 
propriety. But as I half share Ruskin's detestation 
of the ravages on the face of Nature made by modern 
science, here is a rather sharp echo and confirmation 
of his worst predictions. 

x\ll the valleys of the Meuse and Moselle are sullied 
with factory smoke and blasting powder. 

The Bay of Amalfi and the shore of Posilippo are 
defiled by cannon foundries. 

All the Ardennes are scorched and soiled, and 
sickened with stench of smoke and suffocating slag. 

The Peak country and the Derwent valley are being 
scarred and charred for railway lines, mines, and 
factories. 

What has been done to Venice is such an outrage 
that it might wake Tiziano from under his weight of 
marble in the Frari Church, and call the Veronese 
back from his grave. 

The finest torrent in Scotland is about to be diverted 
from its course and used for aluminium works. 

The fumes of these aluminium works will, when 
they are in full blast , emit hydrofluoric acid gas which 
will destroy all the vegetation on Loch Ness for miles 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 43 

The lakes of Maggiorc, of Como, and Garda, are 
all being defiled by factories and steam-engines. 
Thirlmere and Loch Katrine have been violated, 
and all the other English and Scotch lakes will be 
similarly ravaged. Fucina has been dried up as a 
speculation, and Thrasymene is threatened. The 
Rhone is dammed up, and tapped, and tortured, 
until all its rich alluvial deposits are lost to the soil 
of Provence. 

So says " Ouida " in the Nineteenth Century for 
January, 1896. And so all the beauty and grandeiu' 
of the old world is blighted and poisoned by the in- 
satiable lust of men and peoples for gold. It is a 
dismal prospect ; and some will think that amongst 
the few consolations we have left us in Ireland, we 
may number the probability that our blue skies will 
never be blackened by belching chimneys, nor our 
fair vales seamed and scarred as are the sweetest spots 
that the Great Artist, God, framed and beautified for 
the delight of the children of men. 

And so the litany of despair goes on. In science, 
in literature, in the relations of great powers towards 
each other, in the impending and inevitable cataclysm 
that will rend Europe from the Ural mountains to 
the Atlantic seaboard, in the total absence of honour 
and sincerity amongst nations as amongst individuals, 
in the new ideas that are being advanced about social, 
parental, and marital relations, in the lust of the rich 
for more wealth — for wealth is insatiable — in the 
subterranean thunders that herald a terrible revolution 
amongst the working classes — above all, in the ever- 
growing indiflPerence to religion in Protestant lands, 



44 THE LITERARY LIFE 

and the substitution of some new codes of ethics for 
the eternal gospel of Christ ; in all these things the 
prophets of despair — and they are legion — forecast 
a future pregnant with possibilities that may not be 
imagined, and full of doubt and gloom that should 
make sick at heart anyone who thought well of his 
race, or yet entertained a lingering regard for a 
humanity that appears to be bent on destruction. 
Where now is little Pippa : — 

God's in his heaven, 

AlVs right zvith the zvorld? 

Where is the great optimist poet who sings : — 

" Grow old along with me ! 
The best is yet to be, 

The last of life, for which the first was made, 
Our times are in His hand 
Who saith : ' A whole I planned. 
Youth shows but half ; trust God, 
See all, nor be afraid ! ' " 

You will ask, however, very naturally here, where 
is the point for discussion : what is your thesis, 
which we are to support or contradict ? It is simple, 
apparently, a very easy question for solution ; yet I 
venture to say that you never discussed a question 
in this hall which is so many sided, or which leaves 
the decision so uncertain. The thesis is : — 

The optimistic, the hopeful view of the world and 
humanity, is the viev/ that commends itself to us, as 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 45 

fraught with the larger and higher possibilities for 
our race. 
The contradictory thesis is : — 

The pessimists are the thinkers that really — and in 
very deed, by their criticism, their dissatisfaction, their 
sublime restlessness — are pushing on the race towards 
the very perfection in which they do not believe. 



46 THE LITERARY LIFE 



OPTIMISM IN DAILY LIFE 

But before you argue the question it may well be 
asked what practical bearing has such a discussion 
on daily life, or the real progress of the race. It 
would be unkind in us, who owe so much to our poets 
and philosophers, to ask what influence do they exer- 
cise on the first movements and the generic ideas, 
which are the well-springs of all human actions. 
There are thinkers who trace every revolution, pro- 
gressive or reactionary, to our sages of the attic and 
the closet, on the theory : Give me the making of a 
nation's ballads, and I will leave you the making of 
a nation's laws. But, apart from all that, does not 
this vital question enter into our daily life, colouring 
all our ideas, and giving a bias towards all our emo- 
tions and actions. You will ask : But we never have 
met your optimists and pessimists in daily life. Have 
you not ? Let me come down from the Olympians 
for a moment, and challenge the man in the street. 

When you are down below zero in spirits, unable 
to meet that little bill at the bank, with your child 
sick at home ; when you walk under dripping Decem- 
ber skies, your hands stuck deep in your pockets — a 
picture of misery and despair, do you know the man 
that comes up with a smile, slaps you on the back till 
you gasp for breath, shouts at you to cheer up — that 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 47 

the hanker will be considerate, that your chil<i's sick- 
ness is a trifle, that the sun is shining somewhere 
away behind those leaden clouds, etc., etc. ? Well, 
that's an optimist. 

Do you know the man who tells you, just as you 
are starting on that picnic in the middle of June, 
with high hopes and presages of the good time you 
are going to have, that it will rain cats and dogs before 
twelve o'clock, that you will eat your muddy sand- 
wiches and watery pies under dripping umbrellas ; 
and that you need take no water to dilute Jameson. 
He even will supply it by the gallon ! There's your 
social pessimist. 

Do you know the man who buttonholes you on the 
street, when you are rushing for a train, asks you how 
many miles to Sirius, and would trouble you to cal- 
culate how long an express train (just coming in to 
your station) at 45 miles an hour, would take to touch 
the nearest fixed star. Do you recognise the same 
idiot who asks you how many microbes there are in 
a spoonful of milk, and how many will there be if 
you leave it standing for twenty-four hours in a tem- 
perature of 77 Fahrenheit ? Do you remember your 
delight, when he informed you that you have 
24,176,348 microbes waltzing around your mouth, 
and that is only the advance guard, lying in ambush 
for the countless legions that yon swallow every time 
you sit down to a meal, for that innocent spoonful of 
milk contains 10,548,000 microbes, and in twenty-four 
hours, if you have the courage to swallow it, you will 
add to the population of your interior 17,402,000,000 
of the same fertile and interesting subjects } Is it 



48 THE LITERARY LIFE 

the same individual who informs you that early in 
the 20th century you can carry all your meals in your 
waistcoat pocket — breakfast, luncheon, dinner, and 
supper ; and that when you wish to breakfast, you 
just take out a capsule, as you now take a pinch of 
snuff, and, presto, here is the concentrated essence 
of a breakfast, two rashers of bacon, two poached eggs, 
two cups of tea, and several cuts of toast ? And when 
you invite your friend to dine — no more courses, no 
more waiters, no more napkins, nor knives and forks, 
nor flowers, nor glass, nor silver ; no toasts, no after- 
dinner speeches ! You touch an electric button, and 
lo ! you have a delicious heat, and a soft lambent 
light playing around the room ; you take out your 
silver box, tap it, ask your friend to take a pill, and — 
he has done in a moment and in a simple way all that 
we do through the long hours and exquisite tortures 
of an eleven course dinner d la Riisse. He expects 
you to be enthusiastic. But if you are still dull and 
uncomprehensive, he will excite your imagination by 
fairy stories of flying machines, kinematographs, tele- 
pathy, earth-inoculation, ether-electricity, etc., etc. 
Space annihilated, time reduced to minutes by sur- 
passing volume and elasticity. You want to see Rome ? 
Touch a button, here in your study ; and lo ! you're 
in Rome, walking down the Appian Way, studying 
statues in the Vatican, or treading the pavement of 
St, Peter's. You'd hke to see Calcutta ? Here you 
are. Blazing sun, ill-smelling Hooghly, black Hin- 
doos, yellow Musselmen, bells ringing from the 
temples, lamps floating on the stream. Let's see 
Chicago ! Presto ! Here's Chicago — Porkopolis. 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 49 

Tramcars ringing, men and women pushing along 
on the side- walks, the white walls of the Exhibition 
mirrored in the black waters of Lake Michigan, pigs 
squeahng as they pass into the machines, and come 
out hams and sausages. Sausages put into the other 
end of the machine, and out comes a lively porker ! 
Madame Patti (or rather her great successor, for 
Madame Patti is not immortal — however, stop there, 
science will make her so) is singing in Manchester 
to-night. Very well, we shall hear her. You touch 
a button here, sitting down in your armchair : and 
lo ! her wonderful voice comes floating over the wires, 
and you sit enchanted — but you'd give all the world 
to see her. Certainly. The good genie of science is 
here. You call up another number. Your little study 
and arm-chair and books and pictures float away : 
and ecce ! here is the vast tlieatre, the stage with its 
footlights, the gorgeous scenery, the orchestra, the 
box-stalls, the wonderful dresses, the man standing 
up to go out to see a friend, etc. Isn't science wonder- 
ful ? My dear fellow ! but your train is gone, and 
you are tempted to be profane. Do you know the 
demon ? Well, that's your scientific optimist ! 

But don't you know that man that damns science, 
wishes back the good old times when it took four 
days to go to Dublin, dilates on the morning coaches 
a la Dickens^ the early breakfasts on cold beef and 
tankards of ale, the bugle cheerily waking up the 
sleepy passengers, the glorious scenery by wood and 
lake and river, the nevv^ towns you come to, the curio- 
sity your arrival excites, the glorious dinner of veal 
pie, pigeon pie, legs of mutton, sirloin of beef, oceans 

E 



50 THE LITERARY LIFE 

of claret, and plenty of time to eat it and digest it ; not 
like your leather sandwich and your boiling coffee, 
and a whistling engine, and a shouting guard — Ah ! 
the good old times, when science was unknown — 
when men and women were fine, healthy, God-fearing 
beings, living on wholesome food, and not on your 
deleterious Oriental drugs of tea and coffee — when 
disease was practically unknown — when science had 
not invented stethoscopes and electric batteries — 
when there was no neurosis, or neurasthenia, and no 
man knew he had a liver — when we were clothed in 
good old Irish frieze, not in Manchester shoddy — 
when there were no newspapers, bat you could talk 
for six months about a w^edding or a christening — 
when, in a word, the world of each man was a small 
world, and we were more interested about our neigh- 
bours than about naked savages in Matabele, or what 
is to be done with the " sick man " in Constantinople. 
Don't you know him — the scientific pessimist ? 

And the educational optimist — with his piles of 
statistics about the Intermediate Examinations — 5,340 
boys and girls passing in Botany, Mineralogy, Mettal- 
urgy, Trigonometry, Physiology, Differential and 
Integral Calculus, Latin, Greek, Italian, German, 
French, Gaelic, etc. Ah ! my dear sir, what advan- 
tages young people have now that we never enjoyed ! 
And what a glorious future Hes before our country 
when these young people grow to manhood and 
womanhood, and form the commercial and profes- 
sional classes — the backbone of the country ! Educate! 
educate ! educate ! Take your stand amongst the 
nations of the earth, and sweep away the curse of 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 51 

illiteracy ! We are doing it. In Primary, Inter- 
mediate, and, very soon, in University Education, 
we will come into line with the best intellects of Eng- 
land, Germany, and America ; and then the rest is 
easy. Ireland's future is assured ! 

But here, suddenly, as the stream of optimistic 
eloquence flows on, a big block is flung across it by 
the no less fervid but denunciatory eloquence of the 
pessimist : — 

Education ! there's no such thing in Ireland ! 
There are not ten educated men in Ireland, from 
Malin Head to Cape Clear. Your systems of educa- 
tion are a mockery, a delusion and a snare. You cram 
for examinations, as turkeys are crammed for Christ- 
mas : and your boys and girls are consequently 
sufl^ering from intellectual plethora and indigestion, 
resulting in mental atrophy and paralysis. Take any 
of your gold-medallists or exhibitioners three months 
after examination, and he cannot translate a line or 
sentence in the very books in which he passed with 
glowing colours. And if he goes up for a bank exa- 
mination, or some minor office in the Civil Service, 
he cannot pass in the elements of grammar, or the 
rudiments of Geography or Arithmetic. He will talk 
of Homer, and believe that Troy was in N. America ; 
he will tell you that Mount Parnassus was in Ireland, 
and that the Nile flows into St. George's Channel ; 
that Caesar was killed at Clontarf, and that the battle 
of the Pyramids was won by Brian Boru. In other 
words, he is a conceited ignoramus, despising every- 
one, and despised by all. And it only stands to 
reason. You cannot cram a boy's head with all this 
learning to any advantage. Meat for man ; milk for 



52 THE LITERARY LIFE 

babes. But you want the babes to fatten on roast- 
beef. You don't know that over-feeding, as any 
doctor will tell you, is but another word for starvation 
God be with the good old times, when the hedge- 
schoolmasters were as plentiful as blackberries in 
Ireland, when the scholars took their sods of turf 
under their arms for school seats ; but every boy 
knew his Virgil and Horace and Homer as well as 
the last ballad about some rebel that was hanged, 
and every farmer's son could survey his father's land 
by merely looking at it — when the Kerry peasants 
talked to each other in Latin ; and when they came up 
to the Palatines in Limerick, as harvestmen in the 
autumn, they could make uncomplimentary re- 
marks and say cuss- words ad libitum, before their 
master's face, and he couldn't understand them, for 
they spoke the tongue of Cicero and Livy — the 
language of the educated world. These were the 
times when Irishmen knew well what they did know ; 
when every Irishman knew three languages perfectly. 
Voster from cover to cover, the six books of Euclid, 
the science of mensuration ; how to season a hurley 
for the Sunday game, and how to polish the pike-head 

for ?^ But we are degenerates. And what's the 

purpose of it all. Ivook at the way you educate your 
children in the National Schools. Listen ! Here is 
a logical proposition. Any system of education is 
a dismal failure that does not supply the means 
towards the end. Now, the end of education is to 
fit pupils for the spheres they shall occupy in life. 
But the spheres that most pupils occupy in life are 

^ ''The Muster in the Valley, beside the singing river, at the 
rising of the Moon." 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 53 

either spheres of menial or manual labour. Therefore, 
the education of your children should be a literary 
education by accident, but a technical education by 
necessity. Yet we adopt the opposite course. There 
is no such thing as technical education in Ireland, 
and the literary education is far beyond the necessities, 
mental or social, of nine-tenths of the children who 
attend our primary schools. What, for example, 
does a poor girl, who has to earn her bread as house- 
maid, want to know about free-hand drawing or per- 
spective ? And what does a factory hand want to 
know about the intricacies of the Tonic-Sol-Fa 
System, the science of Transposition, the Modulator, 
or the humming song ? And what's the result ? Our 
country overwhelmed with professional men, clerks, 
secretaries, teachers, etc. ; and the further result a 
complete dearth of business men and skilled artisans, 
and the further result of the decadence of Cork and 
Dublin and all purely Irish cities, and the advance 
by leaps and bounds of a half-Scotch, half-American 
city, hke Belfast ! 

There is your educational pessimist. \^ ho does 
not know the political pessimist ? 

" The country gone to the dogs — Ireland once 
more on the dissecting-table — the spirit of faction 
dominant— the world laughing at us — the country 
flung back fifty years, etc., etc." It's all well if he 
does not quote poetry, and tell us :-- 

" Thy treasure with taunts shall be taken, 

Thy valour with jibes be repaid, 
And of millions who see thee, now sad and forsaken, 

Not one shall step forth to thy aid. 



54 THE LITERARY LIFE 

Thou art doomed for thy tyrant to toil, 

Thou art doomed for the proud to disdain, 
And the blood of thy sons and the wealth of thy soil 

Shall be lavished, and lavished in vain. 
Thou art chained to the wheel of the foe, 

By Hnks that the world cannot sever, 
With thy tyrant through sunshine and storm shalt 
thou go, 

And thy sentence is : Banished for ever." 

Who does not know him, particularly in these latter 
days when hardly a rift appears in an ever ominous 
and darkening sky ? 

But is there not a political optimist who tells you, 
cheer up ! the darkest hour is just before the dawn. 
We don't want mechanical unity. Better Ireland 
free, than Ireland united. Ca ira ! all will come right 
Wait till you see the scattered battalions re-forming on 
the floor of the House of Commons ; and the reveille 
of the new campaign sounded, and the fighting-men 
putting on their armour, and all opposing forces mar- 
shalled together for the fiercest, bravest, angriest 
Session yet recorded in the annals of the British 
Parliament — Ay de mi ! says the pessimist. 

W^e had one such magnificent optimist in Ireland— 
always, of course, excepting our own inimitable 
Thomas Davis — in the awful gloom of '48. If ever 
there was a time when men's hearts w^re in their 
boots, through fear and trembling of the awful tri- 
bulation that lay upon the land, surely it was then. 
But one great trumpet-voice echoed from end to end 
of Ireland in that awful gloom. ; and it was the voice 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 55 

of a woman — a great optimist, full of hope and 
courage — Speranza. You remiember that *' Year of 
Revolutions " ! 

I have now drav/n portraits of these two classes, 
into which, in the aggregate, humanity may be divided. 
And now com.es the important, and by no means easy 
question : which class best promotes the interests of 
humanity ? Naturally, one's sympathies go out, at 
once, to the optimists who sing, Hke Pippa : — 

God's i?i his heaven^ 
All's right ivith the zoorld. 

We feel a powerful attraction towards those bright, 
sunny souls, who hold their heads aloft, with an 
eternal siirsum cor da on their lips. We feel a no 
less powerful repulsion against these sallow, cada- 
verous, dyspeptic, despondent cynics, who are for 
ever railing against the world, and clamouring for 
the better things in which they have no hope. But 
when we come down to reasoning, perhaps the case 
differs. For, after all, shorn of his benevolence, what 
is your optimist but the easy, self-satisfied lover of 
good things, who hates to have his rest disturbed and 
who has ever on his lips the watchwords of reaction 
and retrogression : *' Can't you let well alone ? " 
" Aren't we just as well where we are ? " " What 
was good enough for our fathers, is it not quite good 
enough for us ? " etc., etc. And is there not some- 
thing inspiring even in the despairful, yet lofty dis- 
satisfaction which protests : '' Certainly not ! Every- 
thing is not right in your stagnancy and self-posses- 



56 THE LITERARY LIFE 

sion. You must rise up, and onwards. En avant ! 
Everything is wrong, and we shall try to right it, 
though we should fail. Better failure a thousand times 
than to see without protest the lies that are daily 
before us, in men's lips and in their lives. Better 
one sharp struggle, though it end in failure, than the 
ignoble faith of those who stand up with folded arms, 
and witness the eternal tragedy that is going on 
around them.'* 

*' Troublesome fellows, dangerous fellows, revolu- 
tionaries," says the optimist, " These fellow^s will 
upset all decent society, ruin our digestions, bring 
down our stocks and shares, and scatter to the wind 
all our dreams of present and possible happiness." 

" No matter," says the pessimist, " anything is 
better than to live a lie. Come, you sleek hypocrites, 
and look at the world. Here, in the midst of your 
civilisation, human beings are rotting in misery and 
hunger, whilst their souls are in the grasp of the Evil 
One. Can you sit dow^n to your comfortable dinner, 
and know that thousands of your fellow-beings are 
starving ? In want and ignorance, in sin and sorrow, 
half mankind live out their weary lives, and you say 
this is the best possible world for them and you." 

" Yes ! but you say you cannot correct it .? " says 
the optimist. *' Where's the use in beating the air ? " 

*' Where indeed } " And so the eternal discussion 
goes on — the one side maintaining that it is best to 
let well alone, and enjoy life as best you can ; the 
other, that the progress of the race is due to the sub- 
lime dissatisfaction, the eternal restlessness, the 
issuing in healthy or unhealthy revolution. For " out 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 57 

of the black smoke cometh flame," say they ; and 
out of the brooding thunder-cloud the lightning that 
breaks the burden of the storm ; and from the hot 
hearts of angry men the thoughts that shaped them- 
selves into burning words. And from the words came 
deeds, fraught with the germs of all the great things, 
and all the noble things, and all the inspirement, 
that drew man from the beast and pushed him ever 
higher and higher, until nov/ he can see in the future 
that looms before him 

" What ? " says the optimist. 

And he must acknowledge with bent head and 
faltering tongue that all his visions and dreams, all 
the apocalyptic splendours of his hopes and fancy 
are blotted out, Hke a shower of fireworks on a black, 
frowning sky, on which is written in lurid light one 
word — despair ! 

Meanwhile Pippa, tired out, lies dov/n to rest — 

" God bless me ! I can pray no more to-night. 
No doubt, some way or other, hymns say right 

All service ranks the same with God — 
With God, whose puppets, best or worst. 
Are we ; there is no last, nor first." 



AN UNPUBLISHED PREFACE 

III 

In the Imh Ecclesiastical Record for September, 
1 88 1, an article, entitled Religious Instruction in Inter- 
mediate Schools, appeared. It professed to be a 
warning to those immediately concerned, that the 
system of education just then introduced, if not 
sdirectly levelled at the subversion of the religion 
beliefs of the vast masses of Irish students, would at 
least have the tendency to throw into the background 
those studies which are presumed to be of overwhelm- 
ing importance in the education of Catholic youth. 
I do not know whether — in the fierce rivalry for 
honours and emoluments which then originated, and 
which has grown more intense as the years sped by — 
that article was even glanced at by the superiors of 
our colleges and academies ; but it was deemed of 
sufficient importance by the London Tablet to be 
transferred, almost in extenso, to its columns, and it 
probably led to the establishment of a system, of 
diocesan inspection in one or two places in Ireland. 
The experience of fifteen years has not lessened the 
apprehensions of the writer ; and the yearly reports, 
submitted by the managers of schools to the public, 
have rather tended to confirm them. These reports 
read more like the returns of the headmaster of some 
Parisian Lvcee to the Minister of Public Instruction 

08 



THE LITERARY LIFE AND OTHER ESSAYS 59 

than the account rendered by Catholic teachers to 
their Prelates of the scrupulous care of the students' 
highest interests, and the conscientious discharge of 
the lofty and onerous stewardship they have under- 
taken. The answer, of course, is : This is what the 
public require, and this is what we must give. Perhaps 
so. But there is no loftier ambition than an ephemeral 
success in secular teaching ; or rather, is there not 
some minimum of Christian teaching that might be 
expected, and that ought to be enforced } Unkind 
people are censorious enough to assert that, in our 
efforts to prove our liberalism in education, we may 
run the risk of eliminating Christianity from it 
altogether. And still more uncharitable critics have 
gone the length of insinuating that amongst the many 
causes that retard the conversion of England may be 
mentioned the ignorance of dogmatic truth, and the 
indiiference to Catholic interests, that obtain amongst 
a good many of our people who are thrown into direct 
contact with earnest and inquiring minds. 

That minimum I take to be : — 

(i) — A dogmatic training on all those points of 
Catholic doctrine and discipline which are contro- 
verted by those outside the Church. 

(2) — A knowledge of at least all the salient events 
in the Church's history which are of importance, or 
even interest, to the students. 

(3) — A clear understanding of all the rites and 
ceremonies of the Church ; their meaning, their sug- 
gestiveness, and the mysticism that underlies them. 

(4) — An acquaintance with the Church's hymnal 
and sacred music. 



6o THE LITERARY LIFE 

(5) — And most important, that impression on the 
emotional nature of boys, through ceremonies, music, 
prayer, lectures, etc., that shall last through life, when 
perhaps principles are in danger of being forgotten. 

Under this conviction, therefore, I supposed that 
the time had come when a similar warning might 
again be directed to those who were responsible for 
the education of our Catholic youth. But, as an 
ephemeral essay in a Review is merely glanced at, 
and leaves but a light impression, I determined to 
use as a vehicle for this idea that most potent of all 
modern agencies for the diffusion of ideas, namely, 
the story — the novel. And to avoid hurting the 
sensibilities of men, whose responsibilities make them 
keenly alive to criticism, I threw the story back a 
quarter of a century, localised it in a college that has 
long since ceased to exist, and peopled it with charac- 
ters, that, under no possible circumstances, could be 
identified with any existing persons. I thought I had 
taken the most scrupulous care to exclude the possi- 
bility of the identification of Mayfield with any 
existing institution. In discipline and method of 
studies, in its tutorial system, in every single detail, 
that College is no more like any existing college or 
school in Ireland than it is like Dotheboy's Hall on 
the one hand, or Christ Church, Oxford, on the other. 
Yet, with singular perversity, Mayfield was found to 
have its prototype in half a dozen Irish colleges, and 
some of my dramatis personam were supposed to be 
easily recognised in certain well-known professors. 
On the other hand, although admitted to be real and 
intense in its presentment of the distinguishing fea- 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 6l 

tures of Mayfield, as it existed, by the professors and 
students of that institution who still survive, it was 
called visionary and unreal, and " too extravagant 
even for fiction," by those who had never heard its 
name ; and, worst of all, with that peculiar inaccu- 
racy and habit of generalising from very minute par- 
ticulars, which is not the worst effect of that system of 
education under which we are just now labouring, 
one of my characters was made an infidel, another a 
profligate, and the grave imputation was extended, 
by lively and not too scrupulous imaginations, to the 
entire body of Irish students. Thus a book which 
was intended to be, and has been, a stimulus to 
CathoHc education, was described as being, to use 
the dishonest criticism of the Months " an attack on 
Catholic institutions." And thus a secret and in- 
sidious attempt was made to wreck the sale of the 
book, whilst not one of its secret critics had the man- 
liness to come forward and contravene what was 
palpably the main, and, indeed, the only thesis 
advanced. If I could be assured that I was wrong 
in my surmises, and that Catholic education in the 
Primary and Intermediate Schools of Ireland was all 
that could be desired, I should gladly make every 
amende in my power. But the pile of letters that 
have poured in on me from all sides forbid the 
assumption that I was altogether wrong. 

With singular unanimity the Catholic press of 
Ireland and America interpreted the book as a plea 
for a more thorough system of CathoUc education 
in our Colleges ; and all took it for granted that the 
plea was a timely one. Some faint demurrers were 



62 THE LITERARY LIFE 

whispered by one or two professors who, daily sur- 
rounded by a corona of guileless students, may be 
supposed to be happily unconscious of the storm 
and stress of human passion that sweep up to the 
very walls of their citadels. But the men of the 
world — missionary priests, journalists, professional 
men, whose fingers are on the pulses of humanity, 
and whose doors swing open every minute for those 
messages of sorrow and crime that are for ever sent 
out from the masses of tempted souls, had but one 
opinion of the book — that the circumstances of the 
times demanded it, and that it erred only in being 
too feeble a presentment, or too timid and irresolute 
a call. 

But I owe a great deal of gratitude to our own 
CathoUc journals for the honesty with which they 
interpreted my ideas ; and if there be any gleam of 
hope in an ever darkening and ominous sky, it will 
be found in the facility with which great pubhc organs 
gauged the importance and far-reaching influences of 
such a presentment of CathoUc principle as I ventured 
to put forward ; and in the fidelity with which, in 
the face of much irritabihty and super-sensitiveness, 
they admitted the correctness of my statements and 
the opportuneness of the warning which, with all 
diffidence, I ventured to utter. 

The sequel to Geoffrey Austin : Student, which I 
promised, 1 now put forward. It is again a history 
of two lives, running in parallel lines — the one on 
the high mountains of faith, the other in the darkness 
and mists of the valleys of irreligion, but not unbelief. 
I have attempted to show how exalted was the one. 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 63 

how pitiful and depressed was the other. The many 
readers who followed the career of Geoffrey Austin 
and Charlie Travers up to the " parting of the waA^s " 
will, I hope, with an equal interest, read the sub- 
sequent history of their lives up to the happy denoue- 
ment. They were both very ordinary types of students. 
Amongst the many absurd things that were said of 
these two lads, probably the climax was reached in 
the statement that I had made Charlie a drunkard, 
because once he had yielded to temptation under 
pressure of great despondency ; and that I had made 
Geoffrey an infidel because he neglected his prayers 
and became absorbed in the classics. And if, in this 
volume, I have cast a faint halo of the supernatural 
around Charlie's career, let m.e anticipate all criticism 
by saying that I am one of those who believe that a 
spiritual world is all around us, that we are for ever 
touching the fringe of mysteries that elude us ; and 
that perhaps it needs only a little less materiahsm in 
our concepts and desires to enable us to hear the 
rustling of angels' wings over our heads, or touch the 
garments of the dead beloved ones as they sweep by. 
It is quite probable that the usual objection that 
all this is ideal, visionary, and unreal, may be launched 
against this book as against its prelude. Yet the 
critics of Geojfrey Austin will perhaps be more careful 
in the use of such adjectives after what has been stated 
in this preface, and their own riper experience. But 
is it not true to say that a writer of fiction must aim 
at being not only a dramatist, but a creator ; not a 
mere delineator of types, but an architect and framer 
of personaHties, which may not exist just now ; but 



64 THE LITERARY LIFE 

which, it would be rash to say, are beyond the domain 
of possibihty ? I think this is the larger vocation of 
the artist. The greatness of any work depends on 
the idea, as well as upon its execution. The great 
dreamers of the Italian school are somewhat beyond 
the portrait painters of England and Spain. And the 
fame of the great English academicians of to-day 
will not depend on their portraits, though perhaps 
their existence did, but on the creations of their 
fancy, and the higher subhmations of their art. In 
the same way, the creator of ideals in fiction is more 
than a mere delineator of existing types ; and when 
it is said that " such a character is not true to Nature," 
it is only meant that the particular taste or imagination 
of the speaker does not reach so far. Whether this 
creation of new types is altogether for the benefit of 
the reading pubHc may, of course, be controverted. 
But no one will deny that society just now is based 
on rather low levels ; and that it is almost a public 
benefaction to lift it, through new creations, ever so 
little. We have had quite enough of Pagan realism 
in the squalid and nauseous literature of the last few 
years. Let us try the effect of Christian idealism ; 
and let us try the experiment at home. The literary 
instinct has died out in Ireland since '48. Our colleges 
and universities, with one or two notable exceptions, 
are dumb. The art of conversation is as dead as the 
art of embalming. And a certain unspeakable vulgar- 
ism has taken the place of all the grace and courtesy, 
all the dignity and elegance of the last century. Every- 
one admits all this, admits it to be deplorable ; 
deplorable above all in its consequences, and in its 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 65 

worst consequence — the loss of dignity and self- 
respect that is so observable. If I have painted other 
things, and placed a modest picture of a Christian 
Hypatia in Dublin, and gathered around her feet 
some young emotional students, I do not pretend 
that every drawing-room in Dublin is a theatre for 
the display of high erudition, or an Academia of 
more than Grecian culture. So, too, if CharHe 
Travers is an Irish Ozanam (the idea that excites so 
much the contemptuous hilarity of the Month), I do 
not pretend that you will find his counterpart in 
every professional man in Dublin. I only desire that 
these things should be so. And I beg leave to say 
that such creations are by no means impossibilities, 
and that such work as his lies at our own doors. 
Perhaps this modest volume may be the means, 
under Divine Providence, of developing such desirable 
types of Irish character. That the material is there, 
no one can for a moment doubt. 

Let me say, however, that no one can be more 
keenly aw^are than I that the execution of this work 
falls very far short of the ideal. Here again I am only 
repeating the experience of every one that has painted 
or written, chisseled or sung. The Divine idea of 
the worker never yet came forth from the marble or 
the canvas. This very imperfection has been taken 
by many as a proof of our immortality. In eternity 
only shall we reaHse our ideals. But from a literary 
standpoint I have had the ambition (i) of writing an 
Irish story without peasants or policemen, believing 
that the best material for Irish fiction — in the little 
dramas of our cities and towns — lies still untouched. 



66 THE LITERARY LIFE 

(2) I have tried to write an interesting tale without 
that mawkish and ridiculous sentimentality which is 
so revolting to Catholic instincts. (3) I have tried to 
write a CathoHc tale that may escape the fate of most 
Catholic books of our generation. For, assuredly, 
our Catholic literature is smitten with the curse "bf 
barrenness. We have produced no great poem since 
the Divina Commeddia was written ; our philosophy 
lies mouldering under pig-skin covers and brass 
clasps. But two or three writers in our century — 
such as Lacordaire and Pere Gratry in France, and 
Father Faber in England — have popularised Catholic 
theology. In our own language, the Blessed Sacrament 
of the latter is the high-water mark of Catholic achieve- 
ment — the culmination of Catholic poetry, philosophy, 
and theology. Our other writers have not touched 
the masses. They have written for the select few, 
and the select few, under an affectation of contempt, 
but ill conceal the dread they have of being brought 
face to face with truth. But, assuredly, for the most 
part, error — and such error — has been endowed with 
a fatal fascination, with which truth. Divine truth, 
has never been clothed, even by its most faithful 
and loving followers. Why we cannot unlock the 
infinite treasures of Catholic literature, and show them 
to the world, is a puzzle to more than the present 
writer. To suppose, for a moment, that this modest 
volume is going to break the spell of silence that hangs 
around us is a presumption that I am not so foolish 
as to entertain. But I know, to vary the simile, that 
I am turning up the first sod over a rich and inex- 
haustible mine, that would yield undreamed of riches 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 67 

under a better system of Catholic education. And 
from this retreat I think I can see indications in 
Ireland that these happy times are near at hand. 

I think in journalistic and professional circles in 
Dublin and elsewhere there has arisen a taste for 
higher studies on Catholic Hnes. Perhaps the work 
I have sketched out for Charlie has already begun — 
that the idea of a new Catholic propaganda is not 
altogether illusory. However that may be, I launch 
this new volume on the very turbid seas of English 
literature. And whether it succeeds or fails, I think 
I may send it forward with these assurances culled 
from the greatest living dramatist, and perhaps the 
greatest of living poets : — 

" If there be good in that I wrought, 
Thy hand compelled it, Master, Thine. 
Where I have failed to meet Thy Thought, 
I know through Thee the blame is mine. 

*' One stone the more swings to her place 
In the dread Temple of Thy Worth — 
It is enough that through Thy grace 
I saw nought common on Thy earth. 

" Take not that vision from my ken ! 
Oh, whatsoe'er may spoil or speed 
Help me to need no aid from men, 
That I may help such men as need." 

Doneraile, Sept. 8th, 1896. 



CATHOLIC LITERARY 
CRITICISM 

IV 

It is only in very recent times that criticism has 
come to be regarded as a science, or to speak more 
correctly, as an accomplishment, the only credentials 
of which are the assumption of its possession. A 
science supposes apprenticeship, and quahfications 
tested by examination, or the tacit approval of experts. 
But no one, surely, expects that the vast majority of 
critics should be subjected to such trials, or should 
be expected to submit the only diploma of merit in 
a work of their own creation. Yet no man has a right 
to pull down who cannot build up again. For it is 
plain that a child may pluck to pieces a flower, which 
only the All-Powerful could frame and decorate. I 
am speaking of analytical and destructive criticism, 
for the science of synthetic and constructive criticism 
has yet to be discovered. And yet it is the great 
desideratum in modern times, especially for us, 
Catholics. Mr. Arnold, who approaches nearer to 
the ideal of this master-critic than any writer of our 
century (if we may, perhaps, except Mr. Taine), has 
told us that the great work to which moderns are 
called is a better, higher, more world-wide criticism 
than any we have yet known. This he defines to be 
" the disinterested endeavour to learn and propagate 



THE LITERARY LIFE AND OTHER ESSAYS 69 

the best that is known and thought in the world." 
" Real criticism," he says, " is essentially the exercise 
of curiosity as to ideas and all subjects, for their own 
sakes, apart from any practical interest they may 
serve ; it obeys an instinct prompting it to try to 
know the best that is known and thought in the world, 
irrespectively of practice, politics, and everything of 
the kind, and to value knowledge and thought as they 
approach this best, without the intrusion of any other 
consideration whatever." I would, of course, entirely 
disagree with Mr. Arnold in what he considers the 
best thought of the world ; for he would regard it 
from a purely literary and artistic standpoint ; and we 
cannot regard thought, or written or spoken word, 
without relation to the highest and supremest issues 
that are at stake in the world. But I gladly welcome 
the definition that criticism is the pursuit and study 
of high thought and adequate execution ; and as such 
takes its rank amongst the very greatest of the sciences 
that cast their light athwart the footsteps of humanity. 
For men need guidance to-day as of old. Not many 
readers can trust their own judgments. And it is 
easy to conceive readers, young and old, hopelessly 
bewildered and dazed in the awful flood of printed 
matter that is yearly flung from the printing-presses 
of the world ; and still more hopelessly bewildered 
at the conflicting opinions that are thrust upon them 
from^ all directions as to what is vicious and ephemeral, 
or what is useful and permanent, in modern literature. 
A critic, therefore, serves a most useful purpose in 
wisely discriminating between the valuable and useful 
elements of literature ; and I should consider a good 



70 THE LITERARY LIFE 

Catholic critic endowed almost with an apostolic 
vocation of being able to '* try all things " with im- 
punity, and " hold fast by what is good." 

Of the intelligence and wisdom, the delicacy of 
perception, and the wide liberalism of thought, that 
should be the dowry of such a writer, it would be 
difficult to speak with exaggeration. Very great 
issues are at stake. The best thinkers in America 
and the British Isles are unanimous in the belief that 
quite a new departure in our Catholic literature is 
demanded by our own necessities, and still more by 
the duties we owe our Christian brethren who are 
outside the pale of the Church. It is the written w^ord 
that tells best to a generation that is omnivorous in 
its reading. But the written word must be conveyed 
through an attractive channel ; and that channel is 
what is designated by the broad title — literature. It 
is through literature we have to work and convey to 
the minds of our own people a thirst for knowledge 
and principle and the encouragement that comes 
from high ideas and noble language, the exalted truths 
and the thrilling ideas that are part of our heritage. 
And it is through literature we have to open the vast 
treasures of the Church, and show them to those who 
believe we are stricken with the curse of intellectual 
poverty. Let me take one department. Have we 
popularised our philosophy ? Attempts have been 
made to translate it from the folios of the Fathers to 
the dainty octavos and duodecimos of modern libraries. 
Some manuals of philosophy and its history have been 
published. Yet they lack attractiveness. And here 
under my hand is a treatise on Modern Pantheism, 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 71 

to which, owing to its wonderful brilliancy of style, 
any reader might turn with pleasure when wearied 
with the inanities of a modern novel. Is our fiction 
attractive and readable ? Mr. Edmond Gosse, in the 
North American Reviezv, declares that the great cha- 
racteristic of the last decade of years has been the 
abnormal and disproportionate, but unquestioned 
development of the novel. He even startles us with 
the assertion that our best writers are drawn irresis- 
tibly in that direction ; and he even puts forward the 
rather daring speculation that if men like Buckle, 
Newman or Ruskin had been in their prime during 
the last few years, they would have chosen fiction as 
the means of putting forward and emphasizing their 
pet theories. How do we Catholics stand in that 
particular ? And in poetry, what position do we hold ? 
And is our Ecclesiastical History, with all its beautiful 
episodes, famiHar to the reading public ? These are 
questions that may cause us some heart-burnings and 
anxious searching of consciences ; and these are the 
questions which a Catholic critic has the power of 
solving to our satisfaction. For it is not either writers 
or material that we lack. It is the sympathetic appre- 
ciation of what is good in our literature and the 
kindly rejection of what is weak. As to our material, 
we have for philosophy, the vast treasure-houses of 
the Fathers ; for poetry, subjects that reach from 
the lowUest work of Nature, seen as the handiwork 
of God, up to the vast and awful subUmities of the 
last Cantos of the Paradiso ; for essays, we have all 
the complexities of modern civilisation as they are 
studied under the piercing light and unravelled by 



72 THE LITERARY LIFE 

the unerring hand of the Church's teaching and dis- 
cipline ; for fiction, we have Catholic life in our cities, 
aur towns, our prairies, on Irish hills, in English 
oastles, on American lakes and mountains, in the sweet 
cmenities and regularities of Catholic married life, in 
the sublime simplicity of our convents ; in our 
soldiers and sailors, our schoolboys, our priests, our 
professional men, our merchants, our great ladies, 
our simple, faithful servants. We have English and 
German Catholicity, Polish and Irish to deal with ; 
and we have above all certain well-defined elements 
and principles that will keep our novels from running 
into the dreadful issues that mark all modern English 
novels. And the writers, where are they ? There 
are many in the field ; many more, who would come 
forward if they expected, or had any reason to expect, 
a fair, if not a kindly recognition of their work. Now, 
it is just here that a good Catholic critic is invaluable 
to our literature. He can understand what is written. 
This should be his first accomplishment. And it is 
a rare one. To enter into an author's feehngs and 
designs, to know what he aims at, to separate essen- 
tials from accidentals ; and, if the work is solidly 
good, to recognize it as such — these are qualifications 
that suppose a great deal of discernment and experi- 
ence. In judging, for instance, of poetry, what delicacy 
of feeling, what a sense of musical notation, may be 
required ! It is notorious that great thinkers on 
great subjects, may be absolutely without a sense of 
harmony. It is even true that writers whose prose 
style is absolutely perfect in tone and form, may lack 
not only the musical sense, but even the conception 



AND OTHER ESSAY9 73 

of the essentials of poetry. I have before my mind, 
as I write, the name of a writer, whose works from a 
historical and philosophical standpoint are monu- 
mental ; and who has also written some chopped 
lines of prose, which not all the charity of his friends 
can keep him from believing are Miltonic in form and 
conception. The highest poetry, as a fact, does not 
come into the domain of criticism at all. It soars 
above, and eludes the grasp of the critic. It is some- 
times not unintelligible but inexplicable to the poet 
himself. He can neither analyze, nor explain it. 
Does not Plato say so : " All good poets, epic as well 
as lyric, compose their beautiful poems, not as works 
of art, but because they are inspired and possessed. 
For the poet is a light, and winged, and holy thing, 
and there is no invention in him until he has been 
inspired." How then can a man who knows nothing 
of the divine afflatus, deal with this aerial being } 
Well, he clips and burns the wings of this *' light, 
winged, and holy thing," and makes him a creeping 
caterpillar. 

Again, some lonely student, who has been, in his 
seclusion, feeding on the marrow of giants, puts forth, 
it may be resolutely, it may be timidly, some essence 
of what has become to him vital and necessar}^ truth. 
It is put in strange language, and is without the musty 
odour of mediievalism or the schools. A timid critic 
will sniff ominously at it, and pass it by. A too daring 
critic will strive to annihilate it, and fail. The matured 
and discriminating mind of one who is well grounded 
in sacred sciences and their modern applications will 
alone understand it and let the world know of it. 



74 THE LITERARY LIFE 

Yet, if this grave critic does not come by, how surely 
that work, which might be fraught with all kinds of 
important consequences to the Church and the world, 
will be flung aside to rot on bookseller's shelves or 
adorn the topmost level of a lending-library. 

Granted, then, sufficient knowledge and liberality 
of mind in our critic, I should say that his first prin- 
ciple in selecting for commendation a Catholic book 
should be the reversal or rather the direct contra- 
dictory of the old scholastic maxim, Bo7ium ex Integra 
causa, malum ex quocunque defectu. A perfectly heahhy 
axiom in moral science. A vicious and pernicious 
maxim in criticism. Writers, like their books, are 
not perfect. Young writers, particularly, will slip 
into solecisms very easily, because in aiming at a 
main object they are prone to forget side issues. 
Again, writers who are vividly impressed with certain 
ideas, are naturally intense in their expressions. Is 
it not George Eliot who has said somewhere, '' Art, 
of necessity, intensifies " ? It is its province — its 
vocation. What would Turner be without his in- 
tense idealism ? What would Watts be, without his 
intense, sometimes painful realism ? The bare truth 
never convinces. A too strict adherence to the features 
of man or nature generally ends in a bathos. If, 
therefore, a writer who feels intensely the necessity 
of driving home his ideas to the public mind, sins 
inadvertently by faults of art or even by venial extra- 
vagances of principles, it is neither prudent nor kind 
to condemn him absolutely and to close the book to 
a large class of readers. 

And this thought brings me naturally to what is 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 75 

the immediate subject of this paper — the ethical 
aspect of criticism. I am addressing Catholics, who, 
whatever their position may be, can never put off the 
sense of moral responsibility. I am not addressing 
that school of insolence and incompetence which is 
best represented by such sheets as the Saturday Review. 
Let us keep two facts in view, which will enable us 
to determine principles. The first is that which Jean 
Paul Richter states, and which is unhappily too true, 
namely, that the anonymous character of a reviewer 
gives to the judgment of an individual the weight of 
a college. The second is, that nowadays no Catholic 
writer can publish a volume except at his own expense. 
As to the first, however much we may regret it, it is 
but too true. The writer, who sits at his desk, and 
hastily cuts the leaves of a new volume, wields judi- 
cial power of life and death over that volume, according 
to the journal he represents. And many a book has 
passed rapidly over the counter until some foolish 
novice at the pen thinks he has discovered a mistake, 
and gloats over it and magnifies it until the pubUc 
become suspicious, and the sale is suddenly stopped. 
What is the result ? The pubUcation of the book has 
cost the author from seventy to one hundred pounds. 
It becomes a dead loss. If then, the critique which 
has killed the book has been an unscrupulous and 
an unjust one, the writer is unquestionably bound to 
restitution. 

A book is pretio aestimahilis^ the same as a horse, 
or a piece of merchandise. If a flippant, unthinking 
critic, whose opinion, however, is regarded by the 
public, pronounces unjustly that an animal is unsound 



76 THE LITERARY LIFE 

and unsaleable, or a piece of dry goods damaged, he 
is bound to restitution if such an opinion is wrong, 
and he has uttered it maliciously or carelessly. It is 
the property of the author or the publisher ; and they 
have a right that their property shall not be injured 
by statements that are untrue or unsound. 

Does the neglect or contempt of this theological 
principle account for the very pitiful condition of our 
Catholic literature ? Does it account for the fact 
that our best writers have laid down their pens ; and 
that a great many gifted souls whose vocation is litera- 
ture, dread the loss of money on the one hand, or the 
loss of reputation on the other ? Would it account in 
some measure for that amusing, but pathetic and 
painful admission of the greatest of our Catholic living 
poets :^ *' I can call no man in my position badly off, 
for I can double my income any day — by laying down 
my pen " ? That melancholy fact is staring us in the 
face, that Aubrey de Vere, the friend of Wordsworth 
and Tennyson, and quite their equal, has had not 
audience, because of the Catholicity that deeply per- 
meates every line he wrote. I would rather have 
written " May Carols " than " In Memoriam." Yet, 
who reads the former ; and who has not read the 
latter ? 

I am distinctly of opinion, therefore, that we have 
no CathoUc reading pubHc, because the Higher Criti- 
cism, or what 1 have ventured to call constructive 
criticism, is unknown. We have a good deal of 
negative criticism — of v/hich there are two great 
schools — the hyperaemic and the anaemic. Of the tWo 
* Aubrey de Vere, 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 77 

the latter is the most formidable ; but let me take 
them in detail. 

The hyperagmic critic is always young, inexperienced 
sanguine, self-reliant. He does not, to use a phrase 
of Cardinal Newman's, understand the solemn weight 
and meaning of words. He is as irresponsible with 
his pen as a boy with a new revolver. He feels it his 
duty to kill or maim something. To praise a book 
means weakness or want of knowledge. To find 
fault presupposes wisdom and superiority. And, 
therefore, is he always '' on the pounce " to discover 
faults and mistakes on w^hich he can build his final 
judgment, which is always that of the Quarterly 
Review on Keats : '' This will never do." His mode 
of reviewing is peculiar. He commences with a quo- 
tation from Aristotle or Plato, generally the latter, as 
being much more in vogue than his great logical rival. 
The application of this great principle, thus quoted, 
he leaves to the reader ; and descends to particulars. 
Waiving altogether the object of the book, its con- 
struction and technique, he addresses himself to a 
microscopic inspection of phrases and even words. 
A printer's error is a crime ; a mistake in date, or a 
slip in some secondary phrase is magnified into a 
literary misdemeanour. *' This author mistakes an 
acid for an alkali, surely this is unpardonable." " Is 
the author quite correct in the date of the second 
crusade } We think not. Surely the public have a 
right to expect something better than this slip-shod 
writing." " The author here falls into a blunder that 
would be unpardonable in a school-boy. He makes 
Sirius blaze away in the south at midnight in the 



78 THE LITERARY LIFE 

month of June/' These appear rather trifling mis- 
takes, but they leave the book limp and tattered 
in the end, for a good many readers follow the principle 
we have already condemned, malum ex quocunque 
defectu ; and judge of the value of the book by some 
quite extrinsic standard, just as in some parts of 
England, the rustics judge of the qualifications of a 
new parson by his style of horsemanship. Then 
comes the final verdict : *' On the whole we think 
the book may be recommended to our readers ; but 
we hope the author will do better in his next volume." 
Who would invest a dollar in a book that comes before 
the world with such an introduction ? 

The anaemic school is worse, for it generally takes 
the high moral tone. Its eternal warning to authors 
is petirisy virginihusque ; its motto, maxima reverentia 
pueris dehetur. Very true. But what of grown men 
and women ? Are they to be always fed on whey ? 
They demand a stronger diet. Can we give it .^ If 
not, they have the poisonous narcotics of English and 
French literature, that will drown all their Christian 
sensibilities and steep them in that spiritual torpor, 
which is like unto death. 

There is a great temptation here to enter into a 
cognate question, which, however, does not come 
strictly within the scope of this paper, namely, the 
question of the Catholic novel. It may be passed by 
the more easily, because it has been so frequently 
discussed in our journals these latter years. But to 
show how Catholic authors may be driven from the 
field by criticisms of these retrogressive schools, let 
me quote two instances. In these islands, within the 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 79 

last few years, we have had two promising writers — 
the one in poetry, the other in prose. It is no exaggera- 
tion to say that when the first volume of poems by 
Francis Thompson appeared a few years ago, they 
created quite a sensation in London literary circles. 
The life of the author, full of all kinds of strange 
vicissitudes, may have had something to say to his 
sudden popularity in a community that is always on 
the search for new sensations. But the novelty of 
these poems, constructed on new principles, and 
inspired with the loftiest thought, attracted the atten- 
tion of the leading literati of London and forced 
reluctant praise from circles where the rehgious tenets 
of the author, and the subjects of his poems, were by 
no m.eans recommendations. The author was ranked 
amongst the Dii Major es of song, by the great Scottish 
review on the one hand, and by such authors and 
critics as Richard le Gallienne, etc., on the other. 
But the author has retired. For the present he will 
write no more poetry. Why ? I should hardly like 
to intrude upon the privacy of another's thoughts ; 
but Francis Thompson, who, with all his incon- 
gruities, ranks in English poetry with Shelley, and 
only beneath Shakespeare, has hardly had any recog- 
nition in CathoHc circles. If Francis Thompson had 
been an Anglican or a Unitarian, his praises would 
have been sung unto the ends of the earth. He would 
have been the creator of a new school of poetry. 
Disciples would have knelt at his feet. Had he been 
a graduate of Oxford or Cambridge, his bust would 
have been placed in their halls. But being only a 
Catholic and an Ushaw student, he is allowed to retire, 



So THE LITERARY LIFE 

and bury in silence one of the noblest imaginations 
that has ever been given to Nature *s select ones — her 
poets. Only two Catholics — literary Catholics — have 
noticed this surprising genius — Coventry Patmore 
and Wilfred Meynell. The vast bulk of our co- 
religionists have not even heard his name, although 
it is already bruited amongst the immortals ; and the 
great Catholic poet, for whose advent we have been 
straining our vision, has passed beneath our eyes, 
sung his immortal songs, and vanished. Now, to what 
class of criticism has this great poet been subjected ? 
To the verbal and puerile criticism I have detailed 
above. All his crudities and irregularities were care- 
fully noted and exaggerated ; and the great kernels 
of his marvellous conceptions were feebly praised. 
His latinisms and coined, phrases were counted as 
solecisms that could not be tolerated ; as if a poet 
had not a perfect right to do what he liked with mere 
language. It is the poets that have given us the English 
language as it is ; and to refuse to a Victorian poet 
what was so freely conceded to an Elizabethan, is to 
declare that the tongue of Shakespeare and Milton 
had reached a point beyond which it must not be 
developed. There are undoubtedly in this great 
master, I do not say of verse, but of thought, certain 
incongruities that we cannot explain, such as applying 
to our Divine Lord the epithet '* The Hound of 
Heaven " ; but perhaps the poet had some inner 
meaning which we may not discern, and if we object 
to the title, at least we accept the poem as the most 
wonderful piece of literary mechanism we possess. 
If this be so why have we not said so to the world, 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 8i 

instead of shaking our heads at points of versiculation 
or metre, that are really of no consequence ? No ; 
our great poet has come and gone. He is now writing 
little prose sketches for Franciscan Annals at Pan- 
tasaph. He will write no more poetry for the present. 

The other example of our utter incompetency to 
appreciate our Catholic authors and their works may 
be found in our dealings with the author of The New 
Antigone. When that book appeared, some said : 
" At last we have entered the arena with the world's 
own weapons. It will go hard with us or we shall 
succeed. The novel is the modern vehicle of thought. 
We shall use it to propagate truth, as the world uses 
it to propagate error." Were there faults in that book ? 
Yes. But why did we dwell on and exaggerate them, 
forgetful of the main object at stake, and heedless of 
the splendid valor of the writer, who took the enemy's 
weapons and turned them against himself ? Had 
this brilliant CathoHc writer been encouraged he 
would probably, by this time, have poured forth a 
library of standard Catholic novels from his pen. 
But he has retired from the prosecution of a task 
thankless and dangerous ; and he has been driven 
into this retirement by the critics of the anaemic school. 
" When he appears again," says a witty American 
priest, " it will be as the author of a goody-goody 
story, which tells how little Jemmy, the shoeblack, 
laboured and toiled for the support of an aged mother, 
then sickened and died ; and how little Mamie was 
altogether too good for this world, and so entered a 
convent and lived for ever and for ever." 

What, then, do we contend for ? Simply the criti- 
G 



83 THE LITERARY LIFE 

cism that creates, instead of destroying. Never in 
the history of the Church's Hfe was there a period 
more favourable for the creation of a great Catholic 
literature. The vv^orld is Ustening, if we could speak. 
We are in the midst of a revolt against all modern 
literature. In poetry there is an outcry against the 
artificialities that are poured from the press like 
Christmas cards and Christmas numbers, and are 
quite as inane and inartistic. There is a desire even 
to get back to the simplicities of Pope and Goldsmith. 
In philosophy we have but a rehash of ancient errors 
and a feeble attempt to reconstruct them into modern 
systems. In religious literature we have dull sermons, 
platitudes about Christianity without Christ, denial of 
dogma, and all the dreary latitudinarianism that is the 
chief characteristic of modern Protestantism. There 
is no criticism nor critical school. In essay writing, 
obiter dicta, etc., we have but the ephemeral papers 
of magazines. No one now dreams of reproducing 
his articles in the reviews. And the novel has gone 
down into the lowest depths of suggestiveness. When 
Dean Farrar and Mr. Stead are at loggerheads as to 
whether a certain situation in The Christian means 
adultery or not, we can understand how low the 
English novel has fallen. And the world is disgusted. 
It craves for some higher intellectual food. It is tired 
of frothy salaciousness. Here, then, is the grand 
opportunity for Catholic authors. We have solid 
truth to teach the world, if only we can put it into 
attractive form. But we must keep ourselves always 
distinct and separate in our literature. Whatever 
be said of the wisdom of our mixing freely amongst 
our separated brethren and familiarizing them with 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 83 

our practices and teachings, our literature must be 
always exclusive and characteristic. It must not be 
imitative of modern styles, still less of modern ideas. 
We have abundant material for building up a great 
masculine literature, human and sympathetic, divine 
and transcendental. It must touch human infirmity 
without gross realism ; it must deal with passions 
without the luridness of detail that makes passions 
absorbing and infectious. And, above all, it must 
shed around human life and all its many environments 
that beautiful idealism, which is our exclusive posses- 
sion. All the tendencies of the world to-day point 
to a levelHng down of age, sex, position, dignity ; ice 
know that there must be diversity and distinctiveness 
to maintain the Christian ideal. And we also know- 
that it is only in this conservatism, that draws its 
ancient lines and barriers around rank and sex, that 
either Christian dignity or Christian moraHty are to 
be maintained. But it is only the ideaHsm founded 
on CathoHc dogma that can effect this. If, then, the 
world is so fanatical in its opposition to this Christian 
ideal, and if to-day the leaders of its literature are 
iconoclasts of every sacred image and tradition that 
have hitherto been the hope of our race, surely it is 
incumbent upon us to maintain in all their integrity 
those ideas that are the soul of our religious systems. 
And can there be a more ignoble treason than to bow 
to every foolish whim, that under the guise of lite- 
rature, is put forth to please or pander to the irregu- 
arities of a world that is drifting steadily backward 
Into yet another phase of Neo-Paganism ? 

It follows, then, that the world has again to be 
taught Christianity, and has to be taught it in its own 



84 THE LITERARY LIFE 

idioms and dialects, that is, not in scholastic phrases 
or syllogisms, not in the language of mediaeval 
schools, but in its own tongue — that is, through the 
medium of literature. It has been said that if St. 
Paul were living to-day he would be a journaHst, 
that is, he would use the speediest and easiest medium 
of conveying to the world the ideas that were to him 
as the breath of Hfe. Here, then, is the vocation of 
the young and ardent Catholic who wishes to do 
something for Christ before the shadows fall and the 
night comes on. And there cannot be a loftier voca- 
tion than to preach and teach to the wide world, that 
is drifting so rapidly from the side of Christ, some- 
thing of that divine sweetness and light that have 
been, and must ever be, the hope and solace of 
humanity. But such neophytes need encouragement, 
and as such they become the wards of the Catholic 
Press. If inefficient or weak, it is not beyond the 
courtesies of the language or the delicacy of Christian 
refinement to ask them, without giving pain, to 
retire from an arena where their presence would but 
embarrass better quahfied champions. But if there 
be a hope or promise of success it is surely the duty 
of the press to raise those hopes and confirm such 
promise, and this on independent grounds, heedless 
of what a godless journalism, to which the name of 
Catholicism is maranatha^ may put forth. Nay, the 
very highest testimony to the excellence of a Catholic 
work should be the revilings of a press that is not 
only material in all its concepts, but which seems to 
be always hesitating between the mock humility of 
agnosticism and the unblushing indecorum of 
blasphemy. 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 85 

It is a question, whether up to this time we have 
not been too deferential to the criticism of a hostile 
press, as w^U as too liberal in our estimates not only 
of anti-Catholic, but even anti-theistic literature. 
There is a kind of CathoHc hberalism that sees too 
much good in the poisonous and noxious products 
of the Protestant and infidel press, and there is a 
tendency to bow down before the fetishes which a 
corrupt generation finds to worship in its sciences, 
in its arts and in its letters. Our writers forget that 
in the w^ords of Tertullian " every arrow that is shot 
against us has been dragged from the quiver of 
truth." If we have strength to use the world's 
weapons against itself it is what the world has already 
done to ourselves. And we have some idea that the 
equipments of our armouries are not only adequate, 
but superabundant for the warfare in which we are 
engaged. Let us, therefore, have a Catholic literature, 
and let us acknowledge it. Let us reserve our scorn 
for our antagonists, and keep our encouragement for 
ourselves. It is unwise in the forefront of the battle 
to depreciate our forces. Not that we need admit 
the puerile and weakly elements that may undermine 
our strength. But our solicitude should be to 
strengthen the ranks of our literary workers, to be 
eager for their success, so that when the w^orld bow^s 
down before Catholic genius, it may be tempted to 
consider Catholic truth, and to forget the traditional 
scorn, which, unfortunately, we ourselves too fre- 
quently adopt ; and whose watchword is : '' Can 
anything good come out of Nazareth ? " 



THE AMERICAN REPORT 
ON IRISH EDUCATION 

V 

This important document, compiled by W. 
Cloudesley Brereton, formerly Inspector under the 
Intermediate Board, is to appear next year ; and the 
Times in its Literary Supplement has deemed it of 
such importance that it has already published a 
Summary, which gives, we presume, a fair idea of 
what the Report will contain. If we are to judge 
the Report by this Summary, it will be valuable so 
far as the history of educational movements and 
changes in Ireland is concerned. But we have a 
suspicion that, as is quite usual in all such cases, it 
is only officials or professional experts that have been 
consulted ; and that the Inspector has not gone 
down to face the problem and examine it in those 
places where alone it can be studied and solved ; 
that is, in the schools themselves, and in the lives 
of the children after they have left school, and passed 
into the work-a-day world. If an inspector had taken 
that trouble, it would have probably saved him the 
gigantic and useless labour of poring over worthless 
statistics in the pigeon-holes of Education Offices ; 
and probably, he could have compressed what we 
presume will be an elaborate account of the progress 
and prospects of education in Ireland in the simple 



THE LITERARY LIFE AND OTHER ESSAYS 87 

words : There is none ! At least, that is the verdict 
of every thoughtful man in Ireland to-day. 

The census returns of the number of '' illiterate " 
persons in Ireland are very misleading. We do not 
believe there is wilful deception of the Officers ; 
but the standard of education is so very low that 
thousands are returned as capable of reading and 
writing, who are barely able to spell laboriously 
through the columns of a newspaper, or scrawl their 
names in a half illegible manner on a bank-bill. 
Most of these semi-illiterate persons have passed 
through the usual classes or standards in the Primary 
Schools ; but owing to causes, which we shall after- 
wards specifically mention, they abandon the habit 
of reading and writing after leaving school, and sink 
back into a condition of almost absolute illiteracy. 
Any one who has ever witnessed a few peasants 
drawing a bill on a village bank, or signing a paper 
for the purchase of land, and seen their mental agony 
whilst they try to decipher the meaning of the docu- 
ment, and then append their signatures, will testify 
to this. And what is true of our agricultural districts, 
is equally true of manufacturing centres, w^here the 
young lads and lasses, after two years, have almost 
entirely lost the faculty of reading and writing. As 
for a taste for reading anything beyond some light 
novel — or the weekly political newspaper — it is 
absolutely unknown. 

We do not know whether Mr. Brereton has studied 
this aspect of his subject ; but as it embraces the 
whole subject, being simply the net result of all this 
elaborate mechanism, with its ever-growing staffs of 



88 THE LITERARY LIFE 

officials ; and as it means, in very plain English, 
comparative, if not absolute failure, it may be a 
useful, although an ungracious task, to cast a little 
light on the subject. And first with regard to primary 
education. 

Perhaps the best manner of elucidating this 
subject is by comparison of the old and new methods, 
so far as the attitude of the teachers and the nature 
of educational work and methods are concerned. 

There is a marked difference between the old 
untrained school-master and the young teachers who 
now come out, year after year, from our Training 
Colleges, and pass at once into our schools as assist- 
ants or principals. With the old generation, teaching 
was something like what Carlyle was always dreaming 
of and talking about — a kind of lofty vocation, a 
priestly function, which he would not rank lower 
than that of a Kirk-Minister or voluntary preacher 
under the Free Church. The principal teachers then 
were all old men, who had been trained under fiery 
discipline, and were rather too anxious that the 
characters of the young should be annealed, mentally 
and morally, in the same way. The discipline of 
the school was severe. Corporal punishment was 
administered in a manner which would send a 
teacher of to-day into penal servitude. The hours 
were long, generally from lo a.m. to 5 p.m. In many 
places there were morning sessions from 7 a.m. to 
9 a.m. ; and night-schools w^re the rule, not the 
exception. There were no stated times for vacations. 
The old teachers strenuously objected to such a 
waste of time ; and in many towns in Ireland to-day, 



AND OTHER ESSAYS §9 

weird traditions have come down of desperate 
attempts made by the boys to *' bar out " the masters, 
until the latter yielded to the demand of at least a 
short cessation from school-work. 

It is rather an interesting speculation why these old 
men were so much averse from granting periodical 
holidays, or lessening the hours of daily school- 
work. There really is no explanation of such an 
attitude so totally different from everything we are 
accustomed to in modern life, except that those men 
had conceived a perfect passion for work ; that 
solitude was unbearable ; that they were never 
happy without the book and the ferule, and the 
daily worship of a crowd of awe-stricken and reverent 
pupils. It must be remembered that at that time 
travelling was almost unknown except amongst the 
wealthier classes. No teacher would think of wasting 
weeks by the seaside, much less of going abroad. 
And a very important factor in their monotonous 
but singularly useful lives was that they were all 
deeply conscientious men, and that in addition to 
their obligations to the State, they had, owing to the 
then prevailing system of school-fees, a sense of 
personal duty to the pupils, and a corresponding 
interest in their educational advancement. There 
never was a bolder or wiser plan, from their own 
standpoint, than the attempt of British Ministers, 
from time to time, to subsidise the Irish Catholic 
Clergy ; and never a wiser policy than that adopted 
by these latter in thwarting and rejecting such 
attempts. And for the same reason there never was 
a greater, and alas ! more irremediable mistake than 



go THE LITERARY LIFE 

that made by the National Board of Education in 
aboHshing school-fees. It converted the teachers 
into State-officials, and destroyed all personal interest 
in their pupils. And it broke up that sympathy, 
arising out of mutual assistance, that existed between 
the teacher and the parents of the children. It turned 
the schools into Government Lycies^ controlled by 
penal laws ; and whilst it removed from the con- 
sciences of the teachers that sense of commutative 
justice that arose from the personal obligations of 
giving value for the stipends received, it took away 
at the same time from the minds of the parents that 
keen interest in the educational progress of their 
children that naturally is felt where it is well paid 
for. Hence, to-day we find, in the few voluntary 
schools of the country, which are not under the 
management of the National Board, and where fees 
of one penny or twopence a week, up to ten shillings 
a quarter, are paid by the pupils, the attendance is 
cent, per cent. ; whereas, in the National Schools, 
where no fees are paid, and where very often, as in 
the case of Convent Schools, books, papers, slates, 
pens, etc., are supplied gratis to the children, the 
attendance seldom reaches beyond 65 per cent, of 
the pupils on rolls. 

Under the old system again, a great deal of 
initiative or voluntary work was permitted to the 
teachers ; and with their extraordinary zeal, they 
eagerly availed themselves of the permission. The sub- 
jects marked on the Time-tables were very limited in 
number ; and the educational capacities of the 
teachers did not reach beyond them. But what they 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 91 

knew, they knew well ; and they had the talent to im- 
part it thoroughly. The inspection was loose and 
unmethodical. The managers rarely visited the 
schools ; the inspectors came once a year for the 
annual examination. There was a certain freedom 
permissible in the arrangement of lessons, so that if 
boys or girls had a fancy or an aptitude for a particu- 
lar subject or science, they were allowed to exercise 
it without molestation. And if a class interested in 
geography or mathematics seemed to covet a few 
minutes more in that class, no objection was made. 
We remember one clear instance, where two young 
lads, aged 12 to 14 respectively, were permitted by 
the master to spend the seven hours of a day for the 
last two years of their course in working out problems 
in algebra, or exercises (or as they were called *' cuts ") 
in Euclid to the exclusion of every other subject. 
This gave them an extraordinary power of mental 
concentration, that made all succeeding subjects 
comparatively easy. 
The results of this old system were at least twofold : 

(i) Thoroughness in Teaching ; 
(2) A passion for self-improvement on the 
pupil's part. 

As we have already said, the subjects were limited. 
They embraced : 

Reading, Euclid, 

Writing, Algebra, 

Arithmetic, Mensuration, 

Geography. 



9^ THE LITERARY LIFE 

And all of these, with the exception, perhaps, of read- 
ing (the comparative unimportance of which we shall 
discuss hereafter) were taught in a manner which is 
now impossible. 

And the teachers had the singular and unique 
success of implanting in the minds of their pupils 
a sense that, on leaving school, they were hut com- 
mencing their lifers education^ zcJiich would end only 
with life. Hence they turned out generation after 
generation of reading men, eager to supplement the 
elementary education of their childhood by the larger 
reading of after life. The very fact that so much 
liberty of initiative was allowed, that studies were 
not altogether taskwork, that there was a kind of 
sympathy between teachers and pupils arising out 
of a mutual love for kindred subjects, would go far 
to account for this. The eye of the pupil was upon 
his master ; the eye of the master on his pupil. The 
inspector was not much considered. If he chose to 
give an unfavourable report, the master's pocket did 
not suffer too severely, if the parents thought their 
boys were treated well. 

All this is now changed. The personnel of the 
teaching staff has undergone surprising modifications, 
and the methods of teaching have been revolutionised. 
The principals and assistants in all National Schools 
to-day are comparatively young men, most of whom 
have been recently trained at some recognised 
colleges here and there in the country ; but with 
no further experience. They have learned to teach 
scientifically. Many of them have no idea of making 
teaching a profession. Conscious of much ability, 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 93 

they determine that that school shall be a stepping- 
stone to something higher — a little pause in the race 
of life before striding on to the final goal. The little 
children are no longer the sons and daughters of 
friends, who are to be watched over with more than 
paternal vigilance, and whose futures are an object 
of as much sohcitude to the teacher as his own. 
Unlike the old teachers, he does not look forward 
to the time when that brilliant young barrister will 
call to his school and thank him pubUcly for all the 
wise counsel, all the sage admonitions, that he 
received ; or the young priest or minister, flushed 
with the glory of ordination, will steal in and greet 
his old master, and give him his blessing ; or that 
young girl, who has made a prosperous match, will 
roll up in her carriage and place a bunch of violets 
on the master's desk without a word. All that has 
gone ; the pupils are now so many units, who have 
to be worked up into decimals to prove to Treasury 
officials that there has been a certain number of 
wild Irish in attendance at that school, and that 
there is no loophole, alas ! for escape. His salary, 
even to the decimals, must be paid. 

It would be the gravest injustice here if we let it 
for a moment be supposed that the modern teacher 
is indifl"erent or careless about his pupils, except in 
so far as they help him to his salary and increments. 
But, in view of the fact that there is scarcely a teacher 
in the country who has settled down permanently 
in his locality without hope of a better school in a 
more comfortable place ; and in view of the fact that 
so many Irish teachers are flying away to England, 



94 THE LITERARY LIFE 

or seeking situations in the Civil Service, and in view 
of the fact that there are no longer those mutual 
relations between teachers and pupils that arose from 
the payment of school fees, it is no exaggeration to 
say that the calling of a National Teacher in Ireland 
has sunk down from the Carlylean idea to one of 
mere officialdom — the paid hireling of the State. 

The modern methods of education tend to accen- 
tuate this. The teacher is now bound, hand and foot, 
without the slightest power of initiative. The 
manager, generally a clergyman, visits the schools 
once a week or oftener. The manager's eye is on 
the time-table, lest, perchance, the inspector may 
come in and find a class out of order, and a prompt, 
and perhaps peremptory message will reach him from 
DubUn. The inspectors (senior, district, and 
assistants) visit the schools at all times, and a few 
days after the annual examination a visit of surprise 
may be invariably expected. That visit is promptly 
begun by a prompt examination of " Rolls," a com- 
parison between the rolls marked and the number 
present ; a sharp survey of the names that might be 
stricken off the rolls ; an elaborate examination of 
decimals along frightful columns of figures ; the 
abstracts of each day's work, of monthly summaries, 
of yearly reports, etc., etc. The efficiency of the 
school is nowhere in comparison with the neatness 
and accuracy of roll-books. And so, too, the least 
divergence from the time-table which, to the un- 
initiated at least, is as puzzling as a Bradshaw, is 
instantly reported to head-quarters. Let a class be 
ever so interested in a subject, let a boy or girl be 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 95 

ever so engrossed in some problem of physics or 
mathematics — the clock strikes, and the book is 
shut — and the interest of that young mind in that 
subject vanishes, never to return. 

This abuse arises in great part from the multiplicity 
of subjects that now form the curriculum of primary 
education. Let it be remembered that it is oi primary 
education alone we are speaking now. For one of 
the worst abuses that prevail in Ireland is the unhappy 
tendency to foster the foolish ambition and pride of 
the people by allowing primary education to overlap 
Intermediate studies ; and these latter to encroach 
upon the University Curriculum. We have heard 
"■ Analysis " taught to little girls in the fourth 
standard in a manner that might suit young gra- 
duates in a Scotch University ; and the higher grades 
of Tonic Sol-Fa taught to girls who would much 
prefer the latest music-hall chorus from London or 
Liverpool. There are two truths that seem never 
to have been grasped by Irish educationists. The 
first is that they rate the average intelligence of Irish 
children altogether too highly ; the second is, that 
education should also be adaptation ; that is, in the 
great majority of cases, the preparation and training 
of children for their positions in after life. 

The present idea appears to be that children's 
minds should be made not only repositaries of 
universal information, but should also be trained to 
a degree of mental efficiency that is only attained in 
the grand climacteric of life. The question really is, 
whether the child's mind is to be made the storehouse, 
like a doll's shop, full of all small but pretty things ; 



96 THE LITERARY LIFE 

or whether the tastes and talents of the child shall 
be cultivated towards something higher to be 
acquired in after life. This latter is our opinion ; 
and that is the reason we insist so strongly on the 
right of allowing some originality or initiative in the 
selection of subjects by teachers or pupils. 

A simple example will suffice to show how in one 
department alone immense trouble is taken in one 
manner of handUng a very common subject which 
practically is of no utility whatever in after life, 
except to a chosen few ; and no trouble whatever is 
taken in teaching the same subject in that manner, 
and under that aspect, when it might be universally 
profitable. 

How many children in any National School in 
Ireland will be called upon in their after lives to read 
aloud either to an individual or some select gathering ? 
How many will become professional elocutionists ? 
One boy out of five hundred will be a clergyman, 
and must read distinctly and with a certain grace. 
One girl out of ten thousand may be a companion 
to a lady, who may require her to read for her at 
night, or during illness. The remaining legions will 
never, as a rule, be called upon to read distinctly, 
pronounce correctly, or understand the proper 
emphasis of words or phrases. Yet, what time, 
what labour, what pains are expended on an accom- 
pUshment which will seldom or never be requisitioned 
in after .life. Let it be remembered that we are not 
making light of the accomplishment. It is a very 
beautiful one ; but we are speaking now of educational 
methods in their application to the utilities of after 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 97 

life ; and there, in the vast multitude of cases, the 
accomplishment is practically useless. On the other 
hand, reading in the sense of creating a passion for 
reading and a knoivledge of what ought to be read, is 
never taught. The minds of young lads and young 
maidens of sixteen and seventeen are fed with the 
crumbs and pills of scrappy literature — elegant 
extracts, bits of poetry, dissertations on political 
economy, etc., in which, because they are task- work, 
the children can take no interest whatsoever. The 
beauties of EngHsh literature, the vast treasures that 
have been accumulated for centuries by the rich and 
prolific authorship of great and enlightened men ; 
the hoard of precious thoughts that lie hidden there 
beneath the covers of books which modern compe- 
tition has made available for the slenderest purse — 
all are unknown and concealed from the eager and 
inquiring spirits, who then go out into the world to 
feed their minds on the only pabulum of which they 
have ever heard — the garbage of London flimsies, 
or the poison of party political organs, where there 
is neither '' truth, justice, or judgment." A taste 
for reading — I mean reading anything wholesome or 
elevating — is almost unknown in this country. A 
young Englishman or a young Scotchman will be 
found to have a pretty fair idea of the English 
Classics — a pretty fair idea of what books are worth 
reading, and what books are worthless. And, con- 
sidering the fact that really half the joy and pleasure 
of most lives is to be found in books, is it not pitiable 
that our children's minds should be so starved that, 
in after life, they cannot distinguish food from poison 

H 



98 THE LITERARY LIFE 

—the great thoughts that elevate and refine from the 
pitiable trivialities that weaken the intellect, lower the 
standards of ethical and moral worth, and create an 
effeminate and thoughtless people, swayed by passion, 
and regardless, because ignorant of, the higher 
principles of reason and pubHc morality. 

This is only one instance of the irrational manner 
in Vv^hich the minds of our children are formed. How 
this may be remedied I shall point out when treating 
of Intermediate Education. A few brief suggestions 
on the general question must suffice here. 

And first, with regard to the persojinel and the 
training of teachers. I doubt if the educationists of 
Ireland have ever realised the dignity and importance 
of the office of teacher. They are so accustomed to 
consider teaching as a mere means of livelihood, and 
teachers as mere Civil Servants, that it must be 
difficult, if not impossible, for these latter to rise to 
a higher conception of their profession. In fact, it 
is only once or twice in a generation that some 
profound and reverent thinker seizes on the idea that 
next in dignity and honour after the sacred profes- 
sions comes the very exalted and honourable vocation 
of training the young minds of the country. It is 
difficult to see why the profession of teaching should 
be regarded as less honourable than the legal or 
medical professions. If we judge by its importance, 
and not by its emoluments, it should rank far beyond 
them. If we are to judge by its services to the State, 
there is no comparison. If we are to judge by its 
influence on humanity, it stands out the premier 
secular profession. Probably it will take many 



AND OTHER ESSx\YS 99 

generations to understand this. But it should be 
said at once that in our Training Colleges, especially 
those under the management of religious guides, this 
view of the sacredness and solemnity of the teaching 
office should be kept before the minds of the pupils, 
in season and out of season. They have got to deal, 
not with human decomposition and disease, not with 
human crime and folly and dishonesty, not with 
mechanical contrivances and dull, inert matter ; but 
with human souls, which are placed in their hands 
for formation ; and which receive at their hands 
that bias towards good or evil that must influence all 
their after lives, and make them a burden or a curse, 
or a blessing and a help, towards the entire com- 
munity. 

Hence I am of opinion that, at once, the material 
interests of the teachers, their salaries and pensions, 
should be placed in such a position of adequacy and 
proportion that would liberate the minds of teachers 
from all anxiety about their futures, and leave them 
absolutely free to devote themselves to the more 
spiritual side of their exalted calling. I do not think, 
therefore, that the salary of a teacher should be made 
dependent on the size of his school, or the number 
of his pupils. For thence arises the deadly temptation 
of regarding himself as a mere bird-of-passage, who 
has not, and never can, have an interest in his pupils ; 
but is ever looking out in the daily paper for an 
advertisement for principal in some more populous 
place, whence again he is to emigrate when the 
opportunity offers. On the other hand, reason, 
justice, public opinion, and common sense demand 



100 THE LITERARY LIFE 

that when a teacher has honestly and conscientiously 
devoted his life to the services of the State, he should 
be protected by the State by adequate pensions 
from any hardship of poverty or sickness, when 
incapacitated from work by old age or infirmity. 

With regard to the time devoted to education in 
Ireland, we find that 200 days is the minimum exacted 
by the National Board. That is to say, the working 
days in our schools are little more than half the days 
of the year. Setting aside Sundays and holidays, 
there should be 306 w^orking days at least ; and 
allowing the 40 days, which is the maximum of 
vacation allowed by the Board, there should be 266 
working days in the year. Yet a minimum of 200 
days is all that is required from teachers or pupils. 
And each working day means but four hours. Now 
considering the multipHcity of subjects required by 
the Board, and the very limited time that is imperative 
and obligatory on the teachers, it follows that only 
the most superficial education can be imparted to 
the children of the country. Add to this the number 
of days that are lost by individual pupils, who are 
absent through sickness, epidemic or otherwise ; by 
agricultural requirements, and through the thousand 
and one excuses that are made by negligent and 
ignorant parents, and it will be seen how impossible 
it is to create in Ireland a body of youths of both 
sexes, who may be said to leave school even fairly 
equipped for the responsibilities of life. There 
seems to be no reason why (except in the case of 
infants) the school hours should not be extended 
to five ; there is no reason why, as in former times, 
Saturdays should not be half-holidays ; there is no 



AND OTHER ESSAYS loi 

reason why a uniform standard of vacation — allowing 
a fortnight at Christmas, ten days at Easter, and four 
weeks in summer — should not be rigidly maintained > 

The night-extension schools was an admirable idea. 
It failed ; and it failed because the youth of the 
country were not already prepared by the day-schools 
to recommence their education. They were never 
taught that education meant anything but task- work, 
without design or object but to help the teacher to 
live ; and they had no notion of commencing such 
task- work again, when tired and weary after the manual 
labour of the day. 

With regard to the programmes of primary educa- 
tion, let it be again insisted upon that the systems 
should not be allowed to overlap each other, but 
that each, primary, intermediate, and university, 
should be kept rigidly within its own Hmits. Hence, 
what are called ** accompHshments," the frills and 
decorations of education, should be absolutely 
excluded from primary education, for the object of 
primary education is not to discover talent, not to help 
on a favoured few, not to create reputations for clever 
teachers or pupils ; hut to extend the blessings of an 
elementary training amongst the vast masses of the 
population. To raise these masses up from their 
frightful ignorance in which they now spend their 
lives ; to introduce into their homes something of 
the " sweetness and light " of modern civiHsation ; 
to show them, the poorest of the poor, and the 
humblest of the humble, that human life has higher 
issues than are involved in mere drudgery for daily 

^ In Germany, by Act of Parliament, the Schools throughout 
the Empire open and close simultaneously. 



102 THE LITERARY LIFE 

bread ; and, in a practical sense, to show them how 
to avail of the vast utilities that lie beneath their 
hands, and which only a fairly educated people can 
adequately develop— this is the sole object of primary 
education in Ireland. It may be fairly said that 
90 per cent, of the children frequenting our schools 
will have to earn their bread by manual labour. It 
would seem reasonable then, that whilst technical 
education should hold a primary place, everything 
that savours of mere *' accomplishments," or that 
belongs to a higher and secondary course, should be 
rigidly explained. Let us now see how the pro- 
gramme for National Schools meets these demands. 
The entire programme in an ordinary girl's school 
embraces the following subjects : — 



Reading, 
Writing, 
Composition, 
Dictation, 


Geography : — 
Local, 
Physical, 
Mathematical, 


Arithmetic : — 
Mental, 


Laundry, 
Knitting, 


Written, 


Grammar, 


Cookery, 
Irish, 


Parsing, 
Analysis, 


History, 
Sewing, 
Crochet, 


Tonic Sol-Fa, 
Staff Notation, 
Kindergarten, 


Drawing : — 
Geometrical, 
Freehand, 


Object Lesson, 

Hand and Eye Training, 

Drill, 


Scale, 


Fancy-work, 



Religious Instruction. 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 103 

This is an extensive programme for two hundred 
days at four hours a day, and one wonders whether 
it is possible for the pupils to obtain more than the 
merest superficial and elementary knowledge of these 
many subjects. 

As mere " accompHshments," such subjects as 
Freehand, Geometrical and Scale Drawing, Analysis 
(which is only fit for University students), Tonic 
Sol-Fa, Staff-Notation, Fancy-work, Mathematical 
and Physical Geography, might be struck out at once. 
Imagine a class of grown girls, staring at a blackboard 
crowded with geometrical figures, and knowing all 
the time that in a few weeks they will be milking 
cows and washing clothes ! Or a class struggHng 
through the intricacies of Tonic Sol-Fa, when we 
know that every girl there will discard all that in a 
few weeks, and pick up the latest music-hall song 
from London ! And imagine little children in a 
fourth standard puzzHng their poor brains over 
subject, predicate, quahfying predicates and objects, 
when we have known young philosophers in the 
higher colleges torturing their intellects about such 
things. 

Surely, so far as mere literary training is concerned, 
it should be quite enough for working boys and girls 
to know how to read and what to read ; to write a 
decent legible hand ; to compose an interesting and 
grammatical letter ; to speak distinctly and clearly 
without mouthing, mumbling, or slang ; to know how 
to tot up figures and keep accounts, and understand 
the intricacies of buying and seUing ; for boys, some 
technical training should be made indispensable, 



104 THE LITERARY LIFE 

and for girls, cooking and laundry ; and for both, 
some elementary knowledge of hygeine. 

It seems incredible, but it is a fact, that the ordinary 
people who form the bulk of our population do no; 
know, have not even the faintest idea, of how their 
bodies are constructed, what are the organs of the 
body, and how placed ; what are the natures of 
specific diseases, how they are contracted, how they 
may be prevented, or cured. Many children have 
the most fantastic notions of the organs of the body 
and their location ; whilst the processes of circula- 
tion, respiration, and digestion are sealed mysteries 
to them. Most of the diseases of middle life are the 
results of the indiscretions of youth, and many of 
these indiscretions are the results of ignorance as 
well as misdirected passion. I once heard a young 
man who, in the very springtime and promise of a 
useful and even distinguished life, was suddenly 
stricken by an hereditary malady, curse bitterly the 
parents who had brought him into the world. How 
many young men and women have reason to resent 
bitterly, the culpable neglect of parents and teachers 
who, through false shame, or more often through 
indifference, allowed these young and unprotected 
creatures to enter upon the solemn duties of life 
without a word that could guard them from bodily 
disease, or spiritual corruption ! Surely, one of the 
very first things that should be taught the young of 
both sexes is to protect the temples of their bodies, 
and save themselves from the years of agony and the 
premature deaths that are the result of the neglect 
or the indiflference of their inexperienced years. A 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 105 

good deal of attention is now given in some schools 
to the care of the teeth and the eyes, and the hair ; 
and some progress has been made. But there are 
deeper and more radical problems which ought to 
be faced. I have heard that in some high-class 
Protestant institutions the matrons pay enormous 
attention to the physiological development of their 
pupils ; and w^hen leaving school, young ladies are 
carefully instructed as to how they are to maintain 
their physical health, as well as to protect themselves 
against dangers that may arise from social corruption. 
Would that this system were extended to our primary 
schools ; and that our young boys and girls, who are 
flung into the very teeth of temptation, might be 
taught how to safeguard health and virtue together. 
I regard, then, instruction in elementary physiology 
and elementary pathology as absolutely necessary in 
our primary schools. And for girls, a knowledge of 
the science of nursing should be made equally indis- 
pensable. Nursing of infants and of the sick is the 
natural duty and calling of young girls. Apart from 
argument, the eagerness and zeal with which the 
profession of nursing has been taken up of late years 
by hundreds of young ladies throughout the land, is a 
proof of this. If there were not some natural instinct, 
some divinely-planted calHng in this direction, these 
ladies, many of whom have been delicately reared, 
could never face the hardships and the painful 
surroundings which are inseparable from the sick- 
room. This instinct should be fostered and en- 
couraged in our young girls, so that in their own 
homes and families they may be able at any time to 



io6 THE LITERARY LIFE 

render their parents or their brothers and sisters 
such help as can only come from a trained 2nd 
experienced hand. Practical education of this kind 
would make our young people more studious about 
themselves, more inteUigent helpers to others, than 
if they could draw circles with the genius of a Giotto, 
or could analyse the longest sentence in Ruskin. 
And I have but faintly understood the teaching of 
this artist and philosopher, if these are not also his 
ideas. Just now, too, an opportunity is afforded by 
the estabUshment in many districts in the country 
of the Victoria Jubilee Nurses. The local committees 
where these nurses are placed find it extremely 
difficult to collect the requisite funds for the main- 
tenance of the nurse and the appliances she requires 
for the homes of the sick. A small fee given by the 
National Board to these ladies for special lectures 
on Hygiene in the schools of their districts would 
materially help the local committees, and advance 
the cause of education. 

Finally, there just now arises a temptation that 
must be promptly m.et. The Irish people are par- 
ticularly prone to be caught by catch- words, which 
are passed on from mouth to mouth, carrying no 
sense, but like a Tale of little jneaning, though the 
zvords be strong. One of these catch-words is just now 
flying from lip to lip in connection with university 
scholarships. We hear a great deal about " the 
poor man's son," and the necessity of giving clever 
boys a chance of developing undoubted talents in 
the halls of some university. It is a specious cry 
because it holds an elemental truth— that it is a de- 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 107 

ordination in Nature to have splendid talents allowed 
to run to waste ; and to see brave young geniuses, 
who might be Newtons or Lavaters, condemned for 
life to the spade and mattock. But the temptation 
lies in this — that ambitious parents, confident of 
their children's ability, or ambitious teachers, 
anxious for the honour of their schools, might be 
induced to demand and give special time and attention 
to some favoured few, to the detriment of the many. 
If a teacher thinks he has discovered a particularly 
clever lad, who will probably take a scholarship, and 
if he is willing to devote special time to his develop- 
ment, by all means let him do so ; but it must be 
outside school-hours. It would be a crime to take 
away from ninety pupils the teacher's care and 
attention for the purpose of developing one case of 
talent. For, again let us repeat, and it cannot be 
repeated too often, the crying evil of our country 
and our time is the lack of ordinary decent education 
amongst the masses of the people ; and that the 
object of the National and other systems of primary 
education is not to discover or develop the genius of 
one pupil, but to diffuse throughout the entire 
community a sound elementary education that will 
quahfy them to act the part of intelligent and 
responsible citizens. How necessary this is in the 
rapid developments through which the country is 
now passing should be evident to the most super- 
ficial thinker. For good or ill, the processes of 
successive Reform Bills have eventuated in manhood 
suffrage. Every individual, therefore, is part and 
parcel of the administration of the country. To 



io8 THE LITERARY LIFE AND OTHER ESSAYS 

commit that administration into the hands of an 
unthinking, unlettered, and, therefore, irresponsible 
population would be to pledge the country to 
disaster. Yet this is what we have to face, unless 
some revolutionary methods be adopted which will 
bring the means of education within the power of 
every citizen, and the blessings of a Hberal education 
into the homes of the humblest cotter or labourer. 



THE IRISH PRIESTHOOD 
AND POLITICS 

VI. 

The present condition of politics in Ireland raises 
anew the question, what exactly are the views enter- 
tained by the vast majority of Irish priests on the 
present crisis, and what are the habitual relations 
between the Irish priesthood and the Government 
of the country. It cannot be denied that the Ciovern- 
ment, faithful to cherished traditions, regard the vast 
body of Irish priests with dislike, suspicion, and fear ; 
and the English journals, which interpret English 
Tory opinion, indulge in hysterical alternatives of 
contemptuous hatred and pitiful appeals, grounded, 
of course, on exalted principles of justice and morality. 

It has passed into a truism in Irish poHtics, modified 
a Httle in recent years, that EngUshmen cannot under- 
stand our countr}^men — their wishes, their hopes, 
their ambitions. If this be true of the Irish as a whole, 
it is not too much to say that the opinions and 
practices of the Irish Roman Catholic clergy must 
be doubly mysterious to them. That they still remain 
the principal factor in Irish politics is certain. That 
the opinions of certain dignitaries and certain priests 
are also defined and declared is also certain. But 
what are the opinions of the hundreds of Irish priests 

109 



no THE LITERARY LIFE 

who never speak in Press or on platform ? And what 
is the meaning of the attitude of silent watchfulness 
which they assume ? 

It has been remarked that the Irish character is so 
sensitive, unsettled, and impulsive that it changes 
periodically, vibrating to new ideas, new emotions, 
so long as their influence continues. Whether this 
be philosophically correct we know not ; but it is 
certain that the present century has beheld three 
generations of Irish priests, specifically distinct in 
feeling, character, modes of thought ; and that these 
changes have been effected by circumstances, and by 
the education which men in public life insensibly 
receive from the events which are passing around 
them. In the closing years of the last Century the 
young Irish Levite was compelled by penal laws to 
steal to France or Spain for the education denied 
him at home. He returned with all the polish and 
suavity of Continental life, engrafted on the pure 
and noble, yet turbulent elements of character he 
had inherited from his race. He reverenced his 
countrymen for their marvellous fidelity to the 
principles of faith ; but, somehow, his spirit was 
weakened and broken. Still patriotic, he had neither 
the taste nor ability to initiate, or push to any issue, 
a great political movement. He was friendly with 
the gentry and the Protestant clergy ; would not 
recognise any natural antagonism between the racial 
characteristics of Celt and Saxon ; and was scarcely 
a believer in the possibility that Ireland might yet 
be a Nation. Maynooth was built ; the Emancipation 
Act was passed, and forth from the halls of the 



AND OTHER ESSAYS in 

Government Seminary, built specially for the promo- 
tion of loyalty, came another class, no more like the 
priest from Loiivain or Salamanca than an English 
parson is like a mediaeval friar. Less refined, but 
more solid, knowing no language but their own 
native Gaelic and the tongue of the stranger ; but 
firmly grounded in the theology of Aquinas, and 
widely acquainted with the religion and political 
history of their Country and Church ; heartily loving 
their own people, and heartily hating the Government 
and the '' landlord garrison " ; they might have 
changed the whole history of Ireland were there 
one spirit amongst them bold and original enough 
to shape a policy, and show them how to pursue it. 
But years were wasted, and spirit and energy thrown 
away in the agitation for repeal. Then the great 
mind that held all the nation in hand passed away, 
and the stormy excitement of 1848-49, from famine 
and rebelUon, was succeeded by a long period of 
apathy and repose. 

The second period is rich in eloquence and poetry ; 
and possibly the names of MacHale, Cahill, and 
Doyle are amongst the immortals ; but it is singularly 
barren of any political fruit. No great measure was 
suggested to Parliament by the Irish priesthood. 
No Bill, amehorative of the condition of the Irish 
people, was passed by the British Parliamxcnt during 
the long term of years that elapsed between 1829 
and 1870. 

Meanwhile a gradual change was creeping over 
the Alma Mater of the Irish priesthood. Eager and 
inquiring intellects were growing impatient of a 



112 THE LITERARY LIFE 

curriculum of studies that was limited to Theology 
and Ecclesiastical History. The class business which 
satisfied their conscience and the professor was easily 
mastered, the hours of study were long — six hours 
in class-halls or in their private rooms. The young 
clerical student is no dreamer. He could not spend 
all this time decorating the naked whitewash of his 
cell- with fancy portraits, or admiring the stately elms 
which stretched in parallel lines before him to the 
horizon. He must have some mental pabulum 
different from the scholastic disquisitions of his 
leather-bound, musty folios. During his Logic 
Course, he had got a glimpse of a strange new world, 
peopled with poets and philosophers, and the music 
of the former haunted him, and the splendid conjec- 
tures of the latter fascinated him. He knew of course 
it was all visionary. Here was the solid earth beneath 
his feet. Prayer and not problems would keep him 
from sin. 

I think it was on the 25th August, 1869, I passed 
through the Sphinx-guarded gates of Maynooth 
College, and stood near what was then the Senior 
Chapel, and saw, with a certain melancholy feeling, 
the old keep of the Geraldine Castle lighted up by 
the yellow rays of the sinking sun. I remember well 
that the impression made upon me by Maynooth 
College then, and afterwards, when I saw its long, 
stone corridors, its immense bare stony halls, the 
huge massive tables, etc., was one of rude, Cyclopean 
strength, without one single aspect or feature of 
refinement. So too with its studies. Relentless 
logic, with its formidable chevaux-de-frise of syllogisms. 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 113 

propositions, scholia ; metaphysics, sublime, but 
hardened into slabs of theories, congealed in mediaeval 
Latin ; Physics, embracing a course that would have 
appalled a young Newton or Kepler ; and then the 
vast shadow of four years' Divinity towering above 
and over-shadowing all ! 

The Graces were nowhere ! Even in the English 
Literature or Belles-Lettres class, as it was called, 
the course seemed to be limited to hard grinding 
Grammar, and nothing more. During the first 
semestre, a few lectures were given on literature. 
All that I can ever remember of that period were 
the words " Lake Poets," which the good professor 
was for ever repeating. 

After Christmas, however, there was a change ; 
rather a momentous one for some, at least. Father 
O'Rourke, a very gentle, polished man, had to leave 
College, and go abroad in delicate health ; and his 
chair was taken by a young priest, just then finishing 
his third and last year in the Dunboyne House. 
This was one of the most remarkable, if not one of 
the most distinguished, students that ever passed 
through Maynooth. It shows the passing nature of 
all things, that one, who was such a celebrity in his 
own time, should be now almost forgotten. The 
students of the present day have never heard of his 
name ; and yet his classmates, many of whom are 
still living, and some of whom are occupying the 
highest positions in the Irish Church, speak of him, 
of his intellectual power, his imperious ways and 
address, his talent for unwearied work, as something 
phenomenal in a student. The only parallel I have 
ever seen to the brilliant career and subsequent tragic 
I 



114 THE LITERARY LIFE 

failure of this young priest was in the case of WiUiam 
Sutherland, the acknowledged leader and princeps 
in that brilliant group at Oxford, which numbered 
A. Henry Hallam, the Tennysons, Manning, Ward, 
Froude, Monckton, Milnes, etc., amongst its members, 
In Maynooth he speedily established a reputation, 
which had just reached its zenith when I sat beneath 
his pulpit, close to the wall at the left hand side in 
the Logic Hall, near the Junior Chapel. 

He was a tall, splendidly -formed man, with a cast 
of features distinctively Roman. One or two photo- 
graphs remain of him in the albums of friends. The 
face with the stern brow, the lock of hair falling over 
it in studied affectation, the curved lips, the firm, 
broad nose, is the face of a lost archangel. His career 
was tragical ; one other instance of genius misplaced, 
and, therefore, hurled to prompt and inevitable ruin. 

To us, young hero- worshippers, sick and tired of 
logic-chopping, and the awful dulness of the morning 
classes, he carne as a herald of light and leading. 
Swiftly he opened up to our wondering eyes the vast 
treasures of European and, particularly, of English 
literature. He was a trained elocutionist ; and it was 
a pleasure to hear him read either one of his own 
compositions or some masterpiece of prose or poetry 
from the great classic authors. From him I first 
heard the names of Carlyle, Tennyson, and Brown- 
ing ; and I never rested until their books were in 
my hands. 

Before Christmas I remem.ber having, in the usual 
course of things, recited publicly The Dozvnfall of 
Poland. Then one night in the Lent of the year 1870, 
I was marked for another recitation. I had been filled 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 115 

and saturated with the poetry of 1848, and I had 
committed to memory many of its stirring pieces. 
In the innocence and inexperience of youth, I selected 
this evening the most revolutionary ode of that 
stirring epoch ; and quite ignorant or forgetful of 
its inappropriateness within the walls of Maynooth, 
I thundered out (it is worth repeating here) : 

THE YEAR OF REVOLUTIONS 

I 

*' Lift up your pale faces, ye children of sorrow ! 

The night passes on to a glorious to-morrow ; 

Hark ! Heard you not sounding glad Liberty's pa?an 

From the Alps to the Isles of the tideless iEgean ? 

And the rhythmical march of the gathering nations, 

And the crashing of thrones 'neath their fierce exul- 
tations. 

And the cries of humanity cleaving the ether, 

And the songs of the conquering arising together. 

God, Liberty, Truth ! How they burn heart and 
brain ! 

Those words shall they burn, shall they waken in 
vain ? 

II 

" No ! Soul answers Soul, steel clashes on steel ; 
And land wakens land with a grand thunder-peal. 
Shall we, O my brothers, but weep, pray and groan, 
When France reads her rights by the flames of a 

Throne ? 
Shall we fail and falter to join the grand chorus, 
When Europe has trod the dark pathway before us } 



ii6 THE LITERARY LIFE 

No ! Courage, and we, too, will trample them down. 
Those minions of power, those serfs of a crown ; 
Ay, courage, but courage, if once to the winds 
You fling freedom's banners, no tyranny binds. 

Ill 

" At the voice of the people the weak symbols fall, 
And humanity marches o'er purple and pall ; 
O'er sceptre and crown with a noble disdain, 
For the symbol must fall, and Humanity reign. 
On, on, in your masses, dense, resolute, strong. 
To war against treason, oppression, and wrong. 
On, on, with your leaders, and Him we adore most, 
Who strikes with the bravest, and leads with the fore- 
most. 
Who brings the proud light of a name great in story 
To light us to danger ; unconquered, to glory. 

IV 

*' With faith, like the Hebrews, we'll stem the Red 

Sea, 
God, smite down the Pharaohs, our hope is in Thee. 
Be it blood of the t3Tant, or blood of the slave, 
We'll cross it to freedom, or find there a grave. 
Lo, a throne for each worker, a crown for each brow, 
The palm for each martyr who dies for us now ! 
Spite the flash of their muskets, the roar of their 

cannon. 
The assassins of freedom shall lower their pennon ; 
For the will of a nation, what foe dare withstand? 
Then, patriots, heroes, strike ! God for our Land ! " 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 117 

Maynooth had just been disendowed ; and the 
place was no longer a Government institution. The 
mutton which the students ate was no longer the 
Queen's mutton. But you cannot exorcise the tra- 
ditional spirit of a place in a day. The government 
of the House at that time was distinctively conservative, 
if not anti-national ; and it was certainly rash for a 
young student to select such a fierce, revolutionary 
ode for recitation in a college where there was a 
traditional dread of such things. 

Many readers will recognise in these lines the 
famous ode for which, and for a correspondingly 
inflammatory article, the editors of the Nation were 
arrested. And they will recall the dramatic scene, 
when the Crown Prosecutor, at the time, scornfully 
declared that the writer was hiding under the anonym, 
*' Speranza," and afraid to reveal his name ; and how 
a lady stood up in the gallery over his head, and 
declared that she was the authoress. This was Lady 
Wilde, wife of Sir William Wilde, fam.ous oculist and 
antiquarian, and mother of another unhappy Irish 
genius — Oscar. In my youth, her poemxS were on 
all our lips ; and glorious and spirited poems they 
w^ere, sending the blood bounding under the trumpet- 
call, to do something for Ireland. 

Although I acted rashly enough, however, on that 
occasion in selecting these burning words in such a 
staid and solemn place, I was pretty safe, because at 
that very time our lecturer was writing some similar 
verses for the DubHn Nation, under the nom-de- 
plume, " Fion-Barra." There was one poem which 
I have never seen since, which seemed to express 



ii8 THE LITERARY LIFE 

the intense pride and defiance of the writer. I can 
only remember the words : — 

'* Black does it look, my future, 
Masters, that see so far ? 
But I'll make each span of its blackness 
The throne of a stately star." 

And :— 

" Fear was made for the hearts of hares ; 
It was never made for mine." 

I wonder did he foresee the stormy scenes that were 
to be crammed into his little life ; and the fearful 
cataclysm which was to close it ? 

One of his poems, however, I well remember, for 
I committed it to memory at the time, and I have 
never lost hold of it. It is called : 

VINEGAR HILL 

I 

*' Ah, dear Father Tom, how you're panting ! I'm 

sorry I hurried you so ; 
But the heart was red-hot in my bosom, to see the 

old hill ere I go ; 
To stand on its top, as I'm standing, the town huddled 

there at my feet, 
Some eyes, I dare say, in its bosom that looked on 

the rebel's retreat. 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 119 

II 

*' Very dark is the green of the grass here, and sullen 

it shows to the brutes ; 
But we know what 'tis drinking for ever beneath 

from the sod where it shoots ; 
We know, but we're not going to mention the flesh, 

and the blood, and the bones, 
Hidden here since our Wicklow w^as widowed, and 

Wexford was glutted with groans. 

Ill 

*' You mind. Father Tom, how around us, the land 

stretches flatly for miles ? 
You can see every road winding whitely, no rocks, 

and no sheltered defiles. 
Oh God ! hov/ six brave rifled cannon, crammed 

home with the vengeance of years. 
Had shattered the skulls of the Saxon, till Ireland 

rang loud with her cheers I 

IV 

" But you see the poor fellows had pitch-forks, and 

pikes, and a pistol or two ; 
And friends from afar had not risen to teach their 

rude hands what to do ; 
So they came here to die, dimly dreaming that the 

will was as good as the deed ; 
And that Ireland would honour her children, who 

knew not to fight, but to bleed. 



120 THE LITERARY LIFE 

V 

*' And the poor fellows, too, were half-starving ; they 

tell of a thousand or more 
Whose food for a week was raw turnips, raw turnips 

and soft at the core — 
Bad stuff for a stomach that's stationed to stand 

against bayonet and ball ; 
Bad stuff when the heart must be steady, and the 

feet rooted fast Hke a wall. 



VI 



*' And yet on this hill-top bare-breasted, and starving 

and hungry and weak, 
They taught the brave truth that our babies are 

learning to think and to speak — 
That the race is not all to the swift ; nor the victory 

all for the strong ; 
But the great law of God and of Nature is war to 

the knife against wrong. 

VII 

*' Never mind ! Let's go down from the hill-top ; 

we've seen what we wanted to see ; 
The rank grass that feeds on our fathers ; the fields 

where their feet used to be ; 
Poor fellows ! We don't call them heroes ; the land 

of their love w^asn't Greece, 
But we, you and I, give them pardon ; and we pray 

that their souls may have peace." 



THE DAWN OF THE CENTURY' 

VII 



I propose this evening to put before you a limited, 
but let me hope, a clear, well-defined view of that 
outer intellectual world, in which you will soon be 
called to take your place, and an important one ; and 
with that view to stimulate you to more zealous and 
earnest preparation for the part you will have to 
perform. For it is sometimes wise for us all to pause 
and think and look around us ; to wait till the smoke 
clears away from the field of battle, that we may the 
better see the alignments of the enemy, arrange our 
own forces, and make such dispositions that we may 
gain at least an advantage ; for the ultimate victory, 
I presume, is not for us, nor for any soldiers of Christ, 
until the day when the great Captain Himself shall 
come. And measuring as I do the vast energies that 
lie hidden, and as yet bounded and locked, in the 
assemblage which I have the honour to address 
to-night, I feel a certain sense of responsibility — so 
great, that were it not for the deference I owed to the 
courteous invitation of your late President, repeated 

1 An Address delivered to the Maynooth Students in the A ula 
Maxima of the College, December ist, 1903. 

131 



122 THE LITERARY LIFE 

by your present Superior ; and at the same time an 
ambition, I hope a lawful one, of addressing at least 
once in my life the young minds and hearts that 
are to control the future destinies of the Church in 
Ireland, I should have hesitated about assuming a 
duty, which might be left in more capable and zealous 
hands. Nevertheless, I may be able to give you a 
glance into the outer world, its forces, its movements, 
its processes of thought, which may awaken new^ ideas, 
and perhaps larger conceptions of your vocation ; and 
with these, fresh determinations that in the serious 
and solemn duties that He before the Catholic priest- 
hood in our time, you will at least acquit yourselves 
like men. 

All life is a process. Things do not hurry, neither 
do they pause. But, from time to time, there is just 
a rush as of forces breaking their bounds ; and then 
again a lull in human affairs — a little breathing time 
for poor humanity, wherein it stops suddenly, and as 
if, through sheer exhaustion, refuses to be swept along 
on the eternal currents of thought. Just such a 
breathing time we have in the intellectual world of 
to-day. There is no great " movement," as it is 
called, going on in the world outside. The chief 
revolutions of the nineteenth century ran through 
their little cycles and ceased. And we, who have 
seen them, and been blinded by their dust, and 
stunned by their noise, now look back with a certain 
kind of wondering humiliation, that we could ever 
have allowed ourselves to be even temporarily dis- 
turbed by such feeble and transitory things. And if 
we needed a proof of that Divine arrangement in the 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 123 

economy of life, by which truth is safeguarded in 
the custody of an unerring Church, surely we rnay 
find it in the swift judgment that I'ime has passed 
upon the insolent assumptions of the century that 
has just expired. Not that these systems and move- 
ments are forgotten. Nay, it is only now that they 
are being studied in detail. There is a curious leisure 
and repose in the thought of the world of to-day. 
It is not fretted by any particular system of philo- 
sophy. Over there, on the sands of Brighton, Herbert 
Spencer is rolled up and down in a bath-chair, 
speaking to no one, looking out with dimmed eyes on 
the unfathomable sea. He has left a fair amount of 
printed formulas which no one reads. In that highest 
domain of philosophic thought, I know no other name 
that men would care to remember. Science has 
passed from great principles into mere experiment. 
Instead of being mistress of great minds, she has 
become an artificer of toys for men's hands and 
human convenience. The discovery of the new 
metals, ** uranium " and " radium," is heralded as a 
revolution in Science. But w^e are too much accus- 
tomed to these revolutions to heed them. Darwin 
and Owen, Huxley and Tyndall have vanished, and 
Edison and Marconi remain. Great principles, for 
right or wrong, are no longer laid down, fought for, 
assailed, accepted, or rejected. The dog listening 
for his dead master's voice in the phonograph, and 
the group around the Marconi wires in the saloon of 
a Transatlantic steamer, eager to catch the gossip of 
two continents, are types of the present. The great 
voice of poetry has died down into a few artificial 



124 THE LITERARY LIFE 

notes, that have neither the vigour nor the secret of 
inspiration. All the chief singers of the Victorian 
era, except one, are hushed in death. Swinburne 
lives, but is silent. The Poet-Laureate seems to have 
already passed out of public consideration. There 
are but two names before the world to-day, and they 
are called by the damning term of '' minor poets," — 
Stephen Phillips and William Watson. There is one 
great poet — a Catholic— Francis Thompson ; but he, 
having given to men of all he was worth, and they 
were unworthy, has flung his two volumes, with a 
kind of disdain, at the world's feet, and passed, like 
a wise man, into the peace and seclusion of a Fran- 
ciscan monastery. Mr. Lecky, representing history, 
has just passed away ; and amongst the vast crowd 
of wTiters, who come under the general designation 
of " Men of IvCtters," and the great majority of w^hom 
are mere magazine writers with but ephemeral repu- 
tations, there seems but one who will conquer the 
neglect of time, and the indifference and coquetry 
of fame — and that, too, is a Catholic — Dr. William 
Barry. Ireland alone appears to be alive amidst the 
general torpor. The breath of life that seems to have 
abandoned a dead world is passing through her veins. 

What, then, has the " Dawn of the Century " to 
show ? What are the m.anifestations that w^e have 
to study ; and how are we to forecast the future from 
the s5aTaptoms of the present ? 

Travellers who have ventured to climb the steep 
ascent and dread escarpments of Vesuvius, tell us of 
the feeling of utter soHtude and desolation they ex- 
perience when they have reached half-way up the 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 125 

mountain. They walk ankle-deep in hot ashes ; the 
half-cooled streams of lava, ridged and smooth, are 
here and there on every side ; the air is dark and 
sulphurous, and difficult to breathe ; the guides are 
timid and uncertain about proceeding further. All 
around is horror upon horror ; and their hearts are 
chilled with a sense of loneliness and fear. Yet, 
looking upward and onward, there is something more 
terrible. The cloud that ever hangs above the crater 
is lurid from the sulphurous fires beneath, and now 
and again the mountain is shaken by the deep re- 
verberations of the terrible forces that are trying to 
free themselves there beneath the surface, and high 
into the air is flung a burning showier of ashes and 
scorise and red-hot stones, and new streams of molten 
lava are poured down the mountain side. Here is 
desolation ; but there is death. The frightened 
travellers dare not look upwards ; they look around 
them and behind them, and ask many questions of 
their guides as to how best they may retrace their 
steps. Such is the attitude of the intellectual world 
of to-day. All around it is desolation — the desolation 
of abandoned spirits on the lonely heights. It dares 
not look forward. There is but death. Its guides — 
the prophets of agnosticism- -are dumb. All it can 
do is to stop and look back, and try to see if haply 
the past can be any guide to the future. Its attitude 
then to-day is essentially retrospective. It is wearied 
and tired and frightened. Nothing remains but to 
study the past, and see is there a gleam of hope, a 
guidance of hfe for the enigmatic future that lies 
before it. Let us, for our own wise ends, follow the 



126 THE LITERARY LIFE 

example, looking through its eyes, and see what were 
the forces that guided the world into its present 
perilous condition, and leave it there with the ashes 
of dead faiths about its feet. 

The great intellectual forces of the nineteenth 
century resolved themselves into two movements, 
known to historians as the transcendental and em- 
pirical. The former sprang from the writings of 
Rousseau ; affected, even created, the French Revo- 
lution, broadened out and developed into the great 
German systems of philosophy, passed into England 
and coloured the poetry of Wordsworth and Coleridge, 
generated in France a whole tribe of soHloquists and 
dreamers, and finally was caught up and crystallised 
in the half-prophetic, half-deUrious preachings and 
rantings of Carlyle. I'hence it crossed the Atlantic, 
inspired and originated New England Transcenden- 
talism through the Concord School of philosophy, of 
which Emerson, a pupil of Carlyle's, was chief prophet. 
The essential characteristics of this school were 
vagueness and abstraction. It took its very name 
from the fancy that this new knowledge transcended 
all experience, and was quite independent of reason, 
authority, the testimony of the senses, or the testi- 
mony of mankind. Its knowledge was intuitive and 
abstract. It despised definition. It taught the swift 
and immediate grasping of a something unrevealed 
and indefinite, which had hitherto eluded all human 
effort to compass, embrace, or define. Hence its 
terminology was vague. It spoke freely of the Infinite, 
the Infinite Nothing, the Infinite Essence of Things. 
Then the Germans invented a more prosaic name — 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 127 

the thing that is not-I. Coleridge made sub-divisions 
and introduced the now well-worn words, subjective 
and objective knowledge. Carlyle spoke of Eternal 
Verities, the Immensities, the Infinite, the Eternal 
Silences, etc. Emerson wrote of it as the Over- Soul, 
the Spirit of the Universe. How far all this differed 
from pure Pantheism it were difficult to say ; but it 
permeated all literature — history was studied by its 
Hght, poetry was inspired by it, it ran through all 
fiction, became a religious creed, until men every- 
where sought the Secret of Being in the question put 
by Coleridge : — 

" And what if all of animated nature 
Be but organic harps diversely framed, 
That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps, 
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze, 
At once the Soul of each, and God of all }'' 

Then, somewhere about the middle of the century, 
men began to ask whether there w^as any rule of 
conduct, any code of ethics, under all this cloudy 
verbiage. Men are known by their works. Systems 
are judged by their results. What have you to show 
for all this transcendentalism ? How does it affect 
human life, human relations, human progress ? How 
do such doctrines influence the political common- 
w^ealth by educating statesmen into higher ideas of 
political advancement and social amelioration ? What 
do your prophets say ? And lo ! it began to be 
whispered that the sentimental Rousseau did actually 
send his children away to be shut up in an orphan 



128 THE LITERARY LIFE 

asylum ; and that Carlyle, interpreting the Infinite 
Verities as merely brute, blind force, did defend the 
man who broke his word of honour hundreds of 
times, and carried fire and sword into every valley 
and hamlet and town in Ireland ; and honoured the 
Governor w^ho scourged with whips of wire the naked 
slaves of Jamaica; and wrote his ''Iliad in a nutshell" 
to condemn the Northern States of America for the 
emancipation of the Negro. And yet, it would be 
unjust not to say that TranscendentaUsm did raise 
men's minds above a sordid level. If its dogmas 
were vague, at least it appealed to the higher instincts 
and emotions. It certainly rated spiritual and mental 
life above the adjuncts of mere material existence. 
It took men away from mammon-worship and self- 
seeking ; and by insisting on the paramount import- 
ance of Duty, and the vast responsibilities of our 
short but sublime existence on this planet, it gave 
the young particularly higher conceptions of their 
calling, and put many on the high road towards nobler 
and sweeter lives. In Fichte's Nature of the Scholar ; 
in Carlyle 's Past and Present ; and in Emerson's 
Address to the American Scholar, you will find all this 
exemplified. Yet, men were not satisfied. All these 
nebulous hypotheses about Over-Souls and Immen- 
sities could not satisfy the imperious demand of the 
ever-impatient mind of man for something more 
structural and solid. The eternal question arose as 
to the First Principles ; and reason and logic alike 
declared the fundam.ental truth : No Dogma ; No 
Ethics ! A rule of life for men and nations must be 
founded on something more solid than mere verbal 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 129 

abstractions. Yet, all this time, de Maistre in France, 
Newman in England, were thundering this very 
truth into the ears of the multitude ; but the multi- 
tude looked everywhere for illumination, except from 
the central sun. 

Suddenly, a momentous change swept over human 
thought. With one bound it leaped to the opposite 
extreme. "We are tired of abstractions," it cried. 
" W^e want facts ! No more intuition, but demonstra- 
tion ! Reason shall be omnipotent. There is Nature 
under our eyes and hands. We will question her ; 
and she will answer. She will give up her secrets to 
us, and we will build our systems upon them. We 
will tear open the bowels of the moimtains, and read 
their signs, as the haruspices of old read the entrails 
of the sacred, sacrificial fowl, and augured well or ill 
from the revelation. W^e will pull down the stars 
from the skies, weigh them, and test their constituents. 
W^e will seek the elemental forces of Nature, and there 
we shall find the elemental truths. We will pry into 
all things and everywhere, dredge the seas, sweep 
the rivers, drag fossils out of mammoth caves, con- 
struct the forms of dead leviathans from one bone, 
examine the dust of stars in shattered aerolites, and 
the structure of the animal creation in the spawn of 
frogs by the wayside pool, or the tadpoles in the 
month of May. And we shall find that all things are 
made for man ; and that man alone is the Omnipotent 
and Divine." Poets took up the paean of the New 
Era, and sang it in verse that is more immortal than 
the cause. Tennyson laid aside his Higher Pantheism, 
and all the idealizations of youth to chaunt the praises 



130 THE LITERARY LIFE 

of the new pioneers of humanity. And the world 
took up the cry. Through the steamship, the tele- 
graph, distance was annihilated. Mankind was 
shaken by new emotions. The world was moved 
from its solid basis, and began to shift its centres 
of population. Old countries were dispeopled, 
and new states formed, out of a curious congeries 
of mixed and very dissimilar nationalities. The 
agricultural masses began to sweep into the towns, 
which rapidly grew into cities under the increase of 
population. Vast buildings were flung into the sky, 
filled with all modern appliances and conveniences ; 
and in the exultation of the moment, men looked 
back upon the past with a kind of pitying ridicule. 
" We are done with cloud-building and abstractions 
for ever," they said. " We have facts instead of faith. 
This is our earth, our w^orld ; and we w^ant no other, 
The ultimate triumph of humanity is at hand ! " 

And then ? — well, then, at the very height of all 
this pride, men suddenly discovered that under all 
this huge mechanism and masonry they had actually 
driven out the soul of man ; and they began to ask 
themselves : Is this the result ? And is it a result 
that w^e can boast of } Empiricism has triumphed. 
But is the building of sky-scrapers, the slaughter of 
so many milHon of hogs, the stretching of wires 
across our cities, our underground railways, our sea- 
tunnels — is all this a substitute or compensation for 
all the ideals we have sacrificed and lost } And w^hen 
men began to see that beneath all this material 
splendour every noble quality that distinguishes 
man was utterly extinguished ; when they saw the 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 131 

horrors of their midnight streets, the masses festering 
in city slums, the great gulf broadening between the 
rich and poor, selfishness, greed, Mammon-worship, 
the extinction of the weak, the sovereignty of the 
strong, the cruelty, the brutality, that are ever latent 
in the human heart, developed by the new civilization, 
they began to shrink back appalled from their own 
creation, and to think that after all, " man liveth not 
by bread alone." And if for a moment they hesitated 
about this new beUef in the terrible destructiveness 
of a Godless science, there came, ever and anon, the 
deep mutterings of a new terror, the very offspring 
of the science they had worshipped — the spectre of 
Socialism and Anarchy. " Yes," cried the latter, *' we, 
too, are the children of science. Nay more, we are 
its servants and ministers ; we feed its furnaces with 
shades over our eyes to protect them from the blinding 
glare ; w^e w^ork ten hours a day, stripped to the 
waist, and buckets of water have to be flung over us 
from time to time to cool our burning flesh ; and you, 
dressed in your silks, with your Turkish baths and 
servants to fan you from the slightest breath of a 
summer wind ! Who hath decreed this inequality ? 
It is our labour and sweat that have built up your 
eighty millions of dollars, and our guerdon is 
barely a dollar a day. You roll by in your Pullman, 
whilst we keep the road clear for you under a 
tropical sun. Your children are absolutely w^eakened 
with excessive luxury ; ours are starving, body and 
soul, in the slums. And after all, where is the differ- 
ence between you and us ? You doubt it. We'll 
prove it. You are the same clay as we. Mark you, 



132 THE LITERARY LIFE 

this dagger will pierce your flesh, this tiny bullet will 
extinguish your life. You have w^hipped us with 
scorpions. But we hereby order that you shall sleep 
beneath the crossed baj^onets of your soldiers ; that 
your mightiest Emperor and Czar shall never enter 
Rome ; and you must draw a cordon of soldiers 
around the quays of New York to save your 
President's life from the pious vengeance of our 
emissaries." So says, in unmistakable language, the 
latest creation of Empiricism, and the poets take up 
the cry ; and the prophetic voice that chaunted the 
glories of science in *' Locksley Hall " growls hoarse 
in its wailings over a lost world in the '' Locksley Hall 
Sixty Years After." Yes ! Science hath wrested all 
its secrets from Nature but one, the great secret, 
which she never reveals but to the children of faith. 
The attitude of the intellectual world to-day, then, 
is an attitude of waiting ; and in waiting, an attitude 
of indifferentism. Not indifference, because it is 
acutely aware of its critical condition, and looks 
forward with anxious eyes. Nay, from time to time, 
it turns around and gazes towards the Eternal City 
and the Supreme Pontiff ; and in view of the power- 
lessness of states and governments to conquer the 
anarchy that seethes in every Empire, it is watching 
the Church with a "perhaps" upon its lips. Great 
Kings have already gone thither, and their royal 
pilgrimages were universally interpreted as an ad- 
mission that Rome alone could battle with the new 
forces which irreligion had let loose on the world ; 
and the peoples, following their royal masters, and 
in view not only of shattered faith, but of shattered 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 133 

beliefs in human systems, that promised so much 
and performed so little, are beginning to ask if, after 
all that has been said and suggested, Rome alone 
held the secret of the stability of Empires, and the 
safety and happiness of the individual in those 
doctrines and precepts which she preaches so un- 
compromisingly to an unbelieving and scoffing world. 
Across the Atlantic, w^here she has more freedom than 
in older and more conservative states, she is making 
rapid progress. There, too, the distinction of classes 
is more sharply drawn, because there wealth and 
poverty reach greater extremes than in older countries. 
And there is wanting in America that strong conserva- 
tism, born of traditional feudalism, that is saving, in 
some measure, the thrones of Europe. And the non- 
CathoHc world of America is beginning to perceive 
that should the forces of Anarchy and Socialism ever 
break bounds and attempt revolution, there is no 
moral force to stop the outbreak but the Catholic 
Church. Hence, statesmen and Presidents court 
friendship, if not alliance, with the American hier- 
archy ; and the advance of education, wherein our 
Catholic schools take a leading place, is gradually 
acting as a solvent on ancient prejudices brought 
from the mother country, and fostered by designing 
and militant controversialists. 

But you will reasonably ask, what has all this to do 
with us who are destined to work within the four seas 
of Ireland ? Tell us something about our own country, 
its wants, its aspirations, its capabilities, its dangers. 
We pity the world, stranded there on^the mountain 
heights, unable to go backward, afraid to go forward, 



134 THE LITERARY LIFE 

its guides dumb and impotent under the spell of 
modern agnosticism. But we are more deeply con- 
cerned about our own people with whom all our best 
interests are identified. Well, you have a right to 
ask the question, although, as I shall show you, you 
have need, too, to be much interested in the attitude 
of the intellectual world beyond the seas. 

I have said; that the breath of a new life has been 
breathed on our old land. The eternal vitality of our 
race, not to be extinguished by rack or gibbet, Penal 
Law or Grecian gift, has broken out these last few 
years in a vast intellectual revival, the consequences 
of which it would be difficult to measure to-day. It 
would seem as if whilst the population waned, the 
intellectual forces of the country became concentred 
in a great effort towards national regeneration. All 
the best elements of the country seem to unite in a 
forward movement that promises well for the future 
of our country and our race. Our poets have given 
up the ballads and battle-songs which were so famiUar 
a half-century ago, and gone back to Pre-Christian 
times for inspiration. A National Theatre has been 
established for the stage reproduction of dramas, 
founded on the epics, or history, or legends of the 
past ; and the race is more interested with the wars 
of the Firbolgs and Danaans than with the struggles 
of the Gael and the Pale. And the attempt to save 
from extinction that greatest heirloom of the race — 
our National language— has eventuated in an all-round 
revival of national sports and pastimes, music and 
literature, w^hich, to one who witnessed the apathy 
of a dozen years ago, must seem phenomenal. Yet, 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 135 

there is a discordant and dangerous note even here. 
If some Hellenists in England and France have raised 
the cry : Back to Greece from Christianity 1 Back 
to the beautiful physical life, the arts, the drama, the 
music, the freedom of ancient Hellas, from the re- 
straints and asceticism of Christianity, there are not 
wanting amongst ourselves, a certain class of art- 
worshippers and nature -worshippers who seem to 
prefer the free unlicensed Pagan freedom of our fore- 
fathers to the sweeter influences which Christianity 
introduced. I do not regard this, however, as a 
dangerous symptom. I do not think the work of 
St. Patrick and fourteen centuries of Saints and 
Scholars is Ukely to be frustrated by a few Neo- 
Pagans and i^sthetes in our time. 

Then, of course, with the advance of education, and 
the creation of the class of the ''educated-unemployed," 
there must be a certain amount of restlessness, and 
chafing under control, and a spirit of criticism and 
censoriousness, which can only be dissipated by 
larger educational training, or the judicious employ- 
ment of those who have won distinction in our colleges 
and intermediate schools. A few weeks ago, on the 
occasion of the apostasy of a certain realistic novel- 
writer, one of our Irish papers had the following 
paragraph : — 

The personality of Mr. Moore would not be worth 
even a contemptuous reference, were it not that 
there are thousands of young Irishmen in some of 
our big cities, whose minds are being slowly and 
gradually, and very surely, poisoned by influences 
which lead directly towards the abysmal gulf of 



136 THE LITERARY LIFE 

George Mooreism. Speeches have been delivered 
and paragraphs have been printed quite recently, 
which indicate that the speakers and writers are 
drifting, perhaps imperceptibly, but none the less 
steadily, towards a frame of mind, doubting, carping, 
hypercritical, which will not in the end be distinguish- 
able from Continental Atheism. 



And as if to emphasize and corroborate these words, 
we had, a few days after they appeared, an expression 
of opinion from the highest quarters to the same effect 
— that there were probably here amongst ourselves 
certain thinkers, too small of stature and too limited 
in numbers to form a school, but whose antipathies 
and desires seem to run parallel with those of the 
unhappy men who are bringing ruin upon Catholic 
France. These things are not alarming, but significant. 
They are symptoms which we cannot disregard. 



Such then is the vision of the world as it is shown to 
us here in the dawn of our century. But I should 
not have travelled one hundred and eighty miles to 
reveal to you what might be unfolded from every 
page of modern literature, if I had not the larger 
object of applying to your own needs the lessons that 
may be derived from such a review of modern fact 
and thought, and of forecasting your own part in 
their future developments. In making such a prac- 
tical application, I should feel less scrupulous if I 
were speaking to older heads than yours. Mind I do 
not say ''wiser heads," for I am one of those who think 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 137 

that sometimes the splendid disdain of youth is more 
than the cautious and careful feeHng forward of age. 
But I should feel then that my words were merely 
tentative and experimental. But here I feel I am 
casting seminal ideas into souls whose principles have 
not yet hardened in the mould of experience ; and 
which, therefore, owing to this very plasticity, need 
to be formed on lines that shall be drawn altogether 
right and fair and well-proportioned. I feel, too, 
that, as time goes by, each of you will be perforce 
compelled to try my words at the bar of experience ; 
and there are many counsellors there, and in the 
multitude thereof there is not much wisdom. Nay, 
you will be tossed hither and thither by every wind 
of opinion in your latter lives. You will have to see 
principles which you deemed irrefragable, ruthlessly 
challenged and set aside ; and you will have to face 
the worst of all mental trials — the adjustment of your 
conduct to lofty ideals, which, however, will be 
altogether inconsistent with your interests and imme- 
diate happiness. Amidst this eternal fluctuation of 
human opinion, and rushing together of thoughts, 
feelings, and principles, chaotic and confusing enough 
— one star shines, ever fixed, immovable, shedding 
its soft, lambent light across your life-way, fixed as 
the Polar Star, and bright as Phosphor — the Star of 
Duty. There is no drawing the curtains across its 
light, no seeking to shut out its piercing rays. It 
will shine through darkness as of Erebus ; and 
pierce even through recesses where the soul seeks to 
hide itself from itself. And what is that Duty ? 
I doubt if there be a more dramatic scene in all 



138 THE LITERARY LIFE 

human history than that which took place on a certani 
mountain in Jud^a some twenty centuries ago. A 
young man, apparently a mere carpenter's son, had 
just dismissed a wondering, admiring crowd, who had 
began to speak of Him as the '' Prophet of Nazareth; " 
and had gathered around Him a few of His disciples 
to whom He had to say more solemn and sacred things. 
They, that handful of men, were raw, illiterate, 
unkempt, half-naked ; their hands rough from toll, 
their scanty clothes glistening with the scales of the 
fish they had pulled from the lake beneath them. 
And what was His message ? After quietly setting 
aside all hitherto-recognised principles of human 
wisdom, He suddenly addressed them : — 

You are the light of the world ! You are the salt of 
the earth ! 

What ! A lot of half- clad, semi -savage Israelites — 
the light of the world ? Hear it, O ye sophists over 
there in i\thens, listening to the calm, cultured wisdom 
of one of your rhetoricians, as he expounds and 
develops the ever-new beauties of the master-minds 
of Greece ! And hear it, O ye Romans, Hstening in 
your white togas in the Forum to the greatest of your 
orators, and the most profound of your philosophers ! 
Hear and wonder at this sublime audacity — a young 
tradesman in one of your conquered provinces is 
telling a handful of fishermen that they are " the light 
of the world." Not you Plato, nor you Socrates ; 
not you Cicero or Seneca ; but Peter, the fisherman, 
and Matthew, the pubHcan ; and this boy whom 
they call John — these are the light of the w^orld ! 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 139 

Who could believe it ? Well, we, taught by Revela- 
tion, by history, by the subversion of an intellectual- 
ism that was Pagan, and the substitution of a folly 
that is Divine — we believe it, and we know it. 

And if our Lord were justified in pronouncing and 
prophesying such a sublime vocation for His disciples, 
am I not right in saying to you, the future priests of 
Ireland : You are the Light of the World ! You are 
the Salt of the Earth ? Yes ! the pure white light 
that strikes here from Rome is broken up into a 
hundred, a thousand rays that penetrate even to the 
ends of the earth. Maynooth is the Propaganda of 
the West, and you are its Apostles ! Now what does 
that connote ? 

Although primarily intended for the training of 
priests of the Irish mission, this great College has 
become of late years as much a Foreign College as 
All Hallows — it is, let me repeat it, for I glory in 
the title and all its vast significances — the Western 
Propaganda ! Yes ! we cannot suppress our instincts 
— we cannot deny our vocation — we cannot refuse 
our mission. We are the Apostles of the world to-day. 
Even in my own remote village, within the last few 
months, we had three or four deputations of nuns 
from Cape Colony, from Dakota, from Los Angeles, 
seeking amongst our Irish children what apparently 
cannot to be found elsewhere on this planet — those pure 
minds, that keen inteUigence, and that personal love 
of God, that are the constituents of a reUgious voca- 
tion. The same is true all over Ireland. And you, 
gentlemen, many of you, may — must go abroad, to 
other countries, and amidst a people different from 



140 THE LITERARY LIFE 

your own. Instead of the happy, religious, sunny 
children of Faith, you will have to speak to the people 
on the gloomy hill-side, their feet in the hot ashes, 
the desolation of unfaith around them, and their 
guides as dumb and panic-stricken as themselves. 
You will meet them everywhere. They will come to 
hear your sermons in some English church, and to 
challenge you about your faith on Monday morning. 
They will cry to you through the Press ; and half 
insolently, half pleadingly, they will ask for light. 
You will meet them at dinner tables in country 
houses, and they will ask you, amid the dinner courses, 
strange questions about modern beliefs or disbeliefs. 
And if you are the light of the world remember the 
solemn injunction : Let your light shine before men ! 
Now, these strange, sad people, to whom you, a 
Catholic priest, are a mysterious, solemn, unintelli- 
gible anachronism, will speak to you, not in j^our 
language — the language of faith, but in their own 
tongue ; and that you must set yourselves to under- 
stand and interpret. If you care to influence them 
you must go over to their side, stand on their platrfom, 
look through their eyes. They know nothing of you 
— your philosophy, your theology ; but if you let 
them see that you know all about them, it gains their 
confidence, lessens their pride, shows them that you 
have seen all, understand all, and that your light is 
not a shaded lamp, but a sun that penetrates every 
corner and recess of the human heart. Hence, in 
pursuing your philosophical or theological studies, 
you need to have an objective before your mind. 
Rid yourselves of the idea that yours is routine work. 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 141 

Study that you may know, know that you may under- 
stand, understand that you may communicate your 
knowledge to others. " Let your Hght shine before 
men ! " 

In one of Rudyard Kipling's earliest books he tells 
of how a raw regiment of British troops was brought 
up from the lowlands to the Afghan hills to break up 
and destroy an Afghan horde that were hidden in a 
gut or ghaut of the mountains. They marched gaily,, 
to the sound of fife and drum, into the valley, de- 
ployed, advanced in close formation, saw the enemy 
grouped ahead, were ordered to fire. They shut 
their eyes and fired — a half ton of lead into — the 
bodies of the Afghans ? No ! Into the ground ! In 
an instant the Afghans were upon them, slashing 
them, right and left, with their terrible triangular 
knives, and in a moment the British regiment was 
in full flight, whilst the Colonel tore his hair and 
cursed freely from an adjacent height. 

Well, you must not waste your forces thus ; but 
always have a clear and well-defined objective before 
you in all your studies. And to-day, as in the century 
just dead, you will find that those whom you have 
to contend with, and those you have to enUghten, 
divide themselves into the easily recognised classes of 
Transcendentalists and Empiricists — the mystic and 
the scientist, the vague dreamer of dreams, and the 
hard, unimaginative reasoner. And if it pleases God 
that abroad you shall be called upon to defend your 
faith in pubHc or in private, by sermon, lecture, or 
newspaper, see that you quit yourselves like men ; 
and give honour to God, your country, and your 



142 THE LITERARY LIFE 

m 

faith. But here in these sacred halls your preparation 
must be made. This is your gymnasium, your 
training-ground. And if you prove worthy of your- 
selves you will have your reward even here below. 
That was a sublime moment when Ingersoll, the 
Atheistic lecturer, was suddenly called to account by 
a young Irish Catholic in his audience. He was going 
on gaily demolishing Churches and Revelations and 
Christianity when the young man shouted : *' What 
does Father Lambert say to that ? " And the hardened 
atheist stopped suddenly and after a long pause 
replied : " Yes, friend, I admit that if there be any 
Revelation it is that which Father I^ambert has de- 
fended ; and if there be any Christianity, it is that 
of the Church he represents ! " And that was another 
sublime moment when another young Irish priest in 
another American city took up the cause of Holy 
Church against six or seven ministers, and defended 
hinmself, week after week, against their combined 
assault. It was a brave, nay, almost, a perilous act. 
For every day the city was moved as at a Presidential 
election. The labourers, at their dinner hour, cut 
short the time and rushed the cafes, hotels, and 

newspaper offices with the cry : ''Is Father on 

to-day ? " And when they found he was " on," one 
mounted a barrel and read the priest's defence to 
the admiring multitude. And when at last, in spite 
of every effort to compromise and condemn the 
Catholic Church with the old stock objections about 
Galileo, Inquisitions, St. Bartholomew's massacres, 
etc., attack after attack was resisted and beaten back 
by this young priest, and his adversaries, one by one, 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 143 

slunk from the field, and one, an Episcopalian minister, 
was actually compelled to close his church ; then, in 
the moment of victory, his countrymen gathered 
around their young champion, collected a sum of 
j£6,ooo to help him to decorate his church ; the tram- 
conductors of the city, Irish to a man, presented him 
with a service of silver plate ; and even the Protestant 
community honoured his valour, and the President 
of the State appointed him regent of the State Uni- 
versity, an unprecedented honour for a Catholic 
priest. 

But, with all that, I must not forget that the great 
majority of you, gentlemen, are destined to spend 
your lives in the service of your own people, and in 
your native land. Happy are you beyond the apostles 
of your race abroad, for you will have the most faithful 
and deeply-religious people on earth to minister to 
— a people who will look up to you with a kind of 
idolatry, as the representative of all they revere in 
time and eternity. I am speaking now of the great 
masses of the people, especially the poor. There is 
nothing like them on the earth. Your chief work 
will be to lead them on to the higher life ; and I am 
rather sorry that this part of our ministry is not so 
well understood. What I mean is, that the people 
need only direction, I mean ascetic direction, to 
spring at once into the highest and miost heroic 
sanctity. And I earnestly hope that some at least 
of you, gentlemen, will find time from other studies 
to examine the principles and practices of ascetic 
theology, the direction of souls into the higher life, 
and such holy mysticism as you will find in the works 



144 THE LITERARY LIFE 

of St. Teresa or St. John of the Cross. This is the 
transcendentaUsm which the Church acknowledges, 
and which has been the practice of all the saints. 

But, as I warned you before, you will have another 
class to deal with — the semi- educated, the critical, 
the censorious. Some of these will dislike you, 
because their lives are not modelled on Christian prin- 
ciples, and your life is a perpetual protest against 
theirs. Your sermons, your life, your insistence on 
the great Christian Verities fret them beyond endur- 
ance, and they hate you. Odit vos mundus I There 
is another class, which is not irreligious, but which 
seems to blot out of their mental horizon any one 
under the rank of an Archdeacon. These may be 
good CathoHcs, but they do not concern us here. 
They are not an appreciable quantity, so far as we 
are concerned. There is a third class, and to these 
I direct your special attention, as they touch closely 
on that intellectual, godless world of which I have 
already spoken. There is no use in our trying to 
close our eyes to the fact that many of our young 
Catholics have imbibed the Continental spirit, and 
set themselves up as judges, not only of individuals, 
even those in the highest offices in the Church, but 
even of the dogmas of Catholic Faith. These are the 
people who will tell you that the Dreyfus case was 
urged on by the Catholic Bishops of France, that 
persecution of the Religious Orders to-day is not the 
work of Combes, but has arisen from the jealousies 
between the regular and the secular clergy in France, 
that the Bishops were even compelled to call in the 
aid of the Government to save them from the en- 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 145 

croachments of monks and nuns. The same class 
will coolly tell you that all the evils of Ireland can be 
traced to the action of the CathoHc Church ; and if 
you question them about their authorities, they will 
quote the infidel papers of Paris ; or such a historian 
as Froude. Then they pass to dogma. Indulgences, 
Prayers for the Dead, the sacramentals of the Church, 
the little devotions of the faithful, are anathema 
maranatha to these highly cultivated folk, who con- 
descend to go to Mass, and, under a certain tacit 
coercion of public opinion, to attend to the Easter 
Duty. 

With that class, and, indeed, with all others, one 
safe principle may be laid down — that the Irish priest 
m.ust be in advance of his people, educationally, by 
at least fifty years. The priests have the lead, and 
they must keep it. But the right of leadership, now 
so often questioned, must be supported by tangible 
and repeated proofs ; and these proofs must concern 
not only your spiritual authority, but your intellectual 
superiority. The young priest who has lectured on 
" Hamlet " in the Town Hall on Thursday night is 
listened to with deeper respect on Sunday morning. 
The priest who conducts a long and laborious experi- 
ment before a literary and scientific society in any of 
our cities is, henceforward, an acknowledged and 
unquestioned guide in his village. And the priest 
who, quietly and without temper, overthrows one of 
those carping critics at a dinner-party, may confirm, 
without the possibility of its being disturbed again, 
the faith of many who are present, and whose beliefs, 
perhaps, were rudely shaken by the impertinence of 
L 



146 THE LITERARY LIFE 

the shallow criticism to which they had just been 
listening. No, in Ireland at least, gentlemen, we 
must not hide our light under a bushel. Our national 
Church must be the " city built on the high moun- 
tains." And we must not grovel, nor make excuses, 
nor apologise for our existence. We have the lead, 
and we must keep it ! What all that connotes and 
signifies I must leave to yourselves to imagine and 
develop. 

But there is one thing in which, above all others, 
we must keep ahead of our people — the supreme 
matter of priestly hoHness. And this takes me away 
from your outer duties to address yourselves. I 
have kept the good wine to the last ; and, alas ! I 
have left you but little time to drink it. But, probably, 
these, my first, will also be my last words to you ; 
and I desire to throw into them all the emphasis of 
which I am capable. In after life you will increase 
your intellectual stores ; you will enlarge your in- 
tellectual horizon. By large reading and much 
reflection you will find yourselves, in ten or twenty 
years, in quite a different sphere of thought from that 
in which you are placed to-day. Your education will 
only commence the day you leave college and enter 
the larger life. But in one department you shall never 
advance or improve — I mean the department of 
spiritual science. The principles taught now by 
your professors and spiritual guides are fixed and 
unchangeable ; if ever you change or abandon them, 
it will be to your temporal detriment and eternal 
ruin. What do I mean ? 

You are taught now that on the day when the 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 147 

Pontiff places his hands on your heads, and your 
fingers clasp the chalice, you are raised to the highest 
dignity on earth. That is true. You are taught that 
you are more than kings on their thrones, or ministers 
in their cabinets. That is true. You are taught that 
you are more than the angels or archangel. That is 
true. Furthermore, you are instructed that it is by 
no choice of yours, or your parents, that you are raised 
to the sacerdotal dignity. That is true. For you are 
instructed that the Divine Master appHes to you the 
words He applied to His Apostles : " You have not 
chosen Me ; but I have chosen you." You are also 
warned that no sanctity, however great, can be deemed 
commensurate with so high an office ; and that your 
lives, and all that is connected with them, your talents, 
abilities, mental and spiritual faculties, are also placed 
in pledge with Christ for the fulfilment of your sub- 
lime vocation. Why do I insist on such patent and 
palpable truths ? Because you will be tempted to 
deny them. Experience, so much lauded as a success- 
ful master, is also a most dangerous master. It 
teaches, we know ; but often it teaches perilous and 
subversive doctrines. And the worst and most deadly 
temptation of your lives will come from experience 
the day that, looking around you and watching the 
ways and lives of men, you will utter that word of 
the Psalmist : Omnis homo fnendax I or the more 
melancholy verdict of St. Paul : ''All seek their own 
interests ; not the interests of Jesus Christ ! ' ' Beware 
of that moment ; for it is in that moment you will be 
tempted to forget, or deny, the sacred principles you 
have learned in these halls. You will be tempted to 



148 THE LITERARY LIFE 

believe that your sacred office is not a mission and 
vocation, but a mere profession ; and that you are 
at hberty to introduce the language, and the customs, 
and the principles of the world into that sanctuary, 
where the maxims of the Gospel alone should be 
recognised and accepted. You will stand for a moment 
half-paralysed with the spectacle of men rushing 
wildly into forbidden paths, and then, panic-stricken, 
you will be tempted to follow the herd with its treason- 
able cry : Ego et rex Mens ! If you harbour that 
temptation for a moment, in that moment you have 
bartered and forfeited your birthright ; you have 
cancelled the charter of your nobility ; you have 
revoked your oath of ordination ; and from being a 
miles et amicus Christi you have descended to be the 
slave and sycophant of self. 

Hence the necessity of acquiring here, and develop- 
ing hereafter, a certain phase of character, which 
I can only designate as " individualism." You must 
study to be self-centred, self-poised on the strong 
summits of conscience, not moving to left or right 
at every breath of opinion. This is quite compatible 
with that modesty, that humility, that gentleness that 
always characterize thoughtful minds — minds that 
move on a high plane, and that will not descend to 
the vulgarities or common-places of ordinary men. 
Priests of this class or calibre never forget their 
college lessons. But whilst striving in remote hamlets, 
as workhouse chaplains, or even in the slums of large 
cities, to develop themselves intellectually by whole- 
some and judicious studies, they are ever sensible of 
the gentle whispers of their Master, first heard here, 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 149 

never to be stifled in after life — " You are the light of 
the world ! You are the salt of the earth/' " You 
have not chosen Me ; but I have chosen you ! " "I 
do not any longer call you servant but friend." 
*' Filioli mei." Ah, these are the " burning and shin- 
ing lights " of the Church of Christ, within whose rays 
men shelter themselves for warmth and illumination ; 
who cannot be extinguished in life by envy or hatred 
or criticism ; who even in death leave behind them 
in memory a certain twilight or aurora, for their words 
and works survive them ; and many a soul, recalling 
them from the peace of eternity, justifies the pre- 
sumption in the words of the Psalmist : — 

" Thy Word was a lamp to my feet ; 
And a light along my waj's ! " 

Here is what you have to strive after ; here is what 
you have to attain, if you desire to maintain the tra- 
ditions of the Irish Church ; and to be, in very deed, 
the leaders of your people, the shepherds of your 
flock! 

And so I, passing rapidly into the evening of life, 
say this farewell word to you in the morning of your 
days, and in the dawn of the century, where your 
life-work shall be placed. The intellectual and 
spiritual energies, gathered into this hall to-night, 
must exercise a tremendous influence in that future, 
when emancipated, they will have free play, and a 
boundless sphere of action. It is a pathetic, yet con- 
soling thought that, when, far out in the century, 
our faces shall be upturned to the stars, you will be 



150 THE LITERARY LIFE AND OTHER ESSAYS 

striving for the same eternal cause as that for which 
we shall have spent ourselves. Nor have I a moment's 
doubt, that when the torch falls from our feeble hands, 
you will take it up and carry it forward through all 
those years that are sweeping towards us from Infinity, 
and that come fraught with such solemn issues for 
the country we love, the Faith to whch we cUng, the 
Church, which is our Mistress and our Queen, and 
Him, who is our Captain and our King, 



NON-DOGMATIC RELIGION 

VIII. 

It has been well said that a new heresy is to-day 
an impossibility. It cannot even be imagined. The 
world has so completely passed beyond that stage of 
antagonism, that it can never recur to it. It regards 
the great controversies of the past, which we consider 
were Divinely- appointed or Divinely-permitted trials, 
which were destined to make compact the whole body 
of Christian tradition, as childish, because meta- 
physical. It stands forth in all the bareness of its 
agnosticism, naked and unashamed. 

It is an evil symptom and a good symptom. Evil, 
because it argues, nay, as we shall show, professes 
a certain indifference to all Christian traditions and 
beliefs. Good, because it clears the ground and 
simplifies the issues between the great protagonist of 
Revelation — the Church, and its traditional and 
hereditary antagonist, the world. 

Henceforth, and for ever, we are done with local 
and partial controversies about the Invocation of 
Saints, the veneration of rehcs, the devotion of 
Catholics to our Blessed Lady, the utility and neces- 
sity of Confession, the supreme homage of the 
Sacrifice of the Mass. Much more may we regard 
as antiquated, and out of date, the historical questions 
that agitated past generations. It is quite possible 

151 



152 THE LITERARY LIFE 

that even yet in far places on the outskirts of civiliza- 
tion there may be found preachers or readers, brought 
up in all the narrowness of Sunday-school traditions, 
who try to save their sHppery footholds by catching 
at the ancient phantoms of GaUleo, and Inquisitions, 
and all the other horrors of the three-volume novels 
of the eighteenth century. These little skirmishes 
must go on for a while, just as freebooting and guerilla 
warfare continue long after the defeated general of 
a great army has handed up his sword to the Con- 
queror. But in the great centres of intellectual 
thought in the world — London, Paris, Rome — these 
minor issues are now completely set aside ; and the 
mighty forces on both sides are being sifted and re- 
arranged along the two great lines of Faith and Un- 
faith. Dogma and No-Dogma, Life as it presents 
itself to our bare senses, and Life as it is revealed to 
us with all its vast issues and tremendous respon- 
sibilities by Him, Who sitteth above the stars. 

And before we pass away to witness the attitude 
the Church is likely to assume when confronted with 
the new, yet already well-organized systems of un- 
belief, it is hardly unworthy of us, her children, to 
feel a strange thrill of pride for her marvellous and 
superhuman triumphs over all the heresies that have 
assailed her for nineteen hundred years. To all 
human reasoning, and according to all human ex- 
perience, she should have gone down before the 
repeated assaults of heresies that were based on human 
passion, that sprang from human pride, and appealed 
to the instinctive desire of men to Hve untrammelled, 
both in intellect and desire, by any external and 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 153 

arbitrary authority. We know from history and 
personal experience how passion sways the heart of 
man, and carries it into excesses where it is unbridled 
by reason. Given those passions, supported by 
human power — by arms, politics, governments, and 
the people's wills, and we can conjecture what a 
conquest of humanity the Church has made, although 
unbending in her eternal teaching, that the flesh must 
yield to the spirit, and that all the interests of time 
and human things pale into insignificance before the 
grand and paramount interests of eternity. 

The newest development of Protestantism (for 
Protestantism being negation, finds its logical outcome 
here) is the denial, not of one particular dogma or 
article of belief, but the denial of all dogma, and the 
substitution of a system of ethics, whose foundations 
rest upon Chaos. All this was to be foreseen, because 
the principle of Dogma having been denied, when 
the principle of authority was set aside, it naturally 
followed that all certitude would sooner or later be 
called in question, and that that questioning should 
end first in universal scepticism, then in blank deniaL 

Theologically this radical change from the Christian 
ideal of revealed doctrines, entailing by their belief 
a long train of ethical or moral consequences, was 
inevitable. The numberless sects, generated in the 
great Rebellion of Reformation, self-contradictory and 
mutually repellent, acted as a solvent of all belief in 
the minds of thinking men. It needed only time to 
make the world, divorced as it was from the centre 
of dogmatic truth, disgusted with the pretensions of 
sectaries, who ranged along the whole line of hys- 



154 THE LITERARY LIFE 

terical fantasies, from the " conversions " and " gift 
of tongues " of some London Bethel to the Apo- 
calyptic visions of Swedenborg. But it is not 
sufficiently recognised that the pretensions of Science 
aided this growing unbelief. It was not the dis- 
coveries of Science, but the refutations of these 
discoveries, that have really plunged the world in 
infidelity. Science, with all its insolence, could not 
deny the existence of God. Nay, by its very insistence 
on the truth of facts, and its deductions, as well as 
by the tremendous insight it gave into the stupendous 
workings of Nature, it certainly enlarged men's 
vision. And when that vision fell short of the super- 
natural, the minds of men, annoyed by this discovery 
of their limitations, and, as it were, dashing themselves 
against the blank wall of the Infinite, gave utterance 
to the wailings of Agnosticism — " We cannot know." 
** We can see no further." But, when, in our own 
days. Science itself has the ground cut from under its 
feet by fresher and more recent revelations, when 
every new discovery disproves some preceding theory 
that was regarded as beyond disproof ; when the views 
of the greatest thinkers of past generations are now 
regarded as childish and absurd ; and the most 
common and reasonable ideas about space and time, 
colour, sound, light, are now proved to be absolutely 
puerile ; when the philosophy of atoms has been 
revised, disproved, reconstructed, and still remains 
enigmatic ; and when no scientist can yet say whether 
matter is a condition of force, or force a condition of 
matter, the world, that leaned its faith on the dog- 
matism of Science, has ceased to be even sceptical ; 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 155 

and in rejecting or disbelieving its dogmas, has come 
to reject all doctrines of every kind. 

Hence, the formulas of disbelievers in our days — 
" A religious life compatible with disbelief in dogma "; 
" Religion, but not Churches " ; " Ethics without 
doctrine " ; " Christianity without Christ " ; "the 
decay of sectarian doctrines is the revival of religious 
life " ; " the very decline in church-attendance, a 
sign of greater religious vitality " ; *' Christianity, 
not belief in Christ's Divinity, but living according 
to the maxims of Christ." 

It is specious. Most of the Protean forms of 
disbelief have been so. It appeals to a large and ever 
growing class, because it flatters that human pride 
that seeks unbounded license of thought. It is an 
impossible theory of morals. It is illogical and absurd. 

It is specious. It appeals to a moral sense, the 
existence of which, even in the worst of times, men 
have not controverted, although they might have 
been uneasy under its restrictions. The Schools and 
Universities might contend about propositions ; but, 
however evil men might violate the moral sense and 
secretly rebel beneath its precepts, it is only a Rousseau 
here and there, or a Whitman once in a century, can 
be found to argue a return to Nature. Social safety, 
political well-being, the preservation of the Common- 
wealth, the sanctity of the home, the safeguarding of 
individual rights, demand the acknowledgment, if 
not the careful cultivation, of the moral sense. The 
world could not get on without the commandments 
fulminated on Sinai. If the eternal and imperative 
precepts : " Thou shalt not kill," " Thou shalt not 



156 THE LITERARY LIFE 

steal," " Thou shalt not bear false witness," could be 
defied with impunity, civilization would end in a 
cataclysm, and all social life would perish without the 
possibility of being reconstructed on any other basis. 
But (so it seems to modern non- dogmatics) propo- 
sitions, doctrines, decrees, emanating from Churches, 
can be repudiated without any such result. Nay, 
would it not be all the better that the wars of sects 
should cease, and that the ears of the world should 
be no longer tormented with disputations about 
dogmas, or controversies about abstruse and meta- 
physical questions, which the human mind will never 
solve ; and that we should be left at peace to pursue 
the avocation of life within the limits of the moral 
law, about which there can be no question ? 

Again, although it restricts human freedom, this 
theory gives the widest latitude to that libertinism of 
thought, which is claimed as the dearest privilege of 
human Hberty. We admit, it is said, the necessity 
of curbing human passion, of restricting desires 
within bounds compatible with the safety and com- 
fort of others. But our thoughts must be free. We 
must be at liberty to believe, or not believe. Society 
may tie our hands and lock our lips ; but no human 
authority shall, or can restrict, the God-given 
privilege of intellectual liberty. What is it to any 
man whether in the secrecy of my own soul I believe 
there is a God, or no God ; a Trinity, or no Trinity ; 
a God-man, or a mere sage or philanthropist ; a 
soul within me with eternal destinies before it, or I, 
a mere animal, with just the instincts, desires, and 
end of the brute creation } 1 shall allow no man to 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 157 

put shackles on my intellect. The law will punish 
me if I do wrong. Quite sufficient for me then is 
the moral law, the laws of society, my own conscience. 
What are the disputations of sects, or Churches, or 
schools to me ? For three hundred years in the 
beginning of the Christian era the whole Eastern 
Empire was torn asunder by wars, treachery, revolu- 
tions ; Emperor fighting against Emperor, Pope with 
Patriarch, Councils torn asunder. Churches warring 
with Churches, and nations with nations ; for 
what ? One single vowel in the Creed. And since 
that time has not all European civilization been 
threatened with extinction through religious wars ? 
Nay, Protestants though we are, we cannot help 
condemning Luther for that he revived an interest 
in dogmatic religion by defying its central authority, 
just at the time when Europe was slowly, but surely, 
drifting back from the misery and squalor of the 
Dark Ages to the sweetness and light, and natural 
lives and happiness of the ancient Paganisms. Yes, 
let us alone ! We want to hear no more about 
dogma or disputation — Arian and Anglican, Cal- 
vinist and Socinian, High Church and Low Church, 
Irvingite and Swedenborgian. We bend our neck to no 
man, no church, no creed. We claim the privilege of 
unshackled freedom. W^e pin our faith to no for- 
mulas. We subscribe to no articles. Within us is 
the light of reason. Without us the laws of society 
that we shall follow ; these, we obey. But Churches, 
Creeds, Confessions of Faith, we shall have none 
of them. If we want to worship, the expanses of 
Nature will be our sanctuary, the dome of Heaven 



158 THE LITERARY LIFE 

our Temple ; the interchange of courtesies with our 
kind will be our Ritual ; the poets will be our 
Apostles ; History our Evangelist. We shall worship 
in Temples not made of hands ; and our Apotheosis — 
our final return to inorganic creation ! We are 
content to be merged in the Universe of Matter ! 

So say — in speech, and book, and pamphlet, from 
Press and platform, in prose and verse, essay and 
lecture — the adherents of this, the newest, the most 
widely spread, and the most specious and attractive 
form of Atheism which has appeared in our time. 

Yet, the absurdity of the thing is apparent. Its 
consequences would be, if pushed to logical conclu- 
sions, calamitous. 

This '' moral sense," innate or acquired, must rest 
on some principle. If the precept, " Thou shalt not 
kill," is accepted, the principle on which it depends 
must be accepted also. Surely, it is not a mere whim 
or caprice of humanity that keeps men's hands from 
being imbued in the blood of their fellow-men. It 
is not a sentiment of mercy, or compassion, or mere 
humanitarianism that saves the world from promis- 
cuous murder. How valueless such sentiments are 
in a whirlwind of rage and passion, such as is let 
loose in war, or in a panic, we know well. There 
must be then some underlying principle, tacitly 
acknowledged by the entire race, and which is formu- 
lated in the theory or statement, in which all men 
acquiesce, "It is wrong and criminal to shed the 
blood of another." But this is dogma. Therefore, 
in accepting this common religious and social prin- 
ciple, you put the yoke of dogma about your neck. 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 159 

The same rule applies to every moral prfnciple 
by which Society is cemented and solidified. The 
Church says : " Whosoever declares or holds that 
it is right to steal, or murder, or rob, or bear false 
witness, let him be anathema." The non-dogmatist 
says : '' Every man possesses a moral sense ; and this 
declares that it is criminal in se^ and subversive of 
all moral order to steal, or murder, or bear false 
witness ; and whosoever holds this criminal theory 
is only fit to be put outside the pale of civilization.'* 
Where is the difference in the formula ? The veriest 
non-dogmatist has " anathema '* on his Hps as well 
as the dogmatic Church. 

Yes, but we are not speaking now of moral precepts, 
is the reply. There we are at one. We admit that the 
basis of all moraHty is dogmatic principle. What we 
repudiate is, your Councils, your Decrees, your fine- 
drawn Definitions and Distinctions about articles of 
Faith, of whose inner meaning you can know nothing, 
much less teach us. We admit that the moral teach- 
ings of Christianity are beautiful ; and we try to 
fashion our lives thereon. But, as to the person of 
Christ, His origin, His Nature, His mission, His 
miracles, His power, we know nothing. We accept 
His moral teaching. We reject all dogmas connected 
with His Person. 

But do you not see that all the force of the supreme 
moral teaching of Christ comes from the fact that 
He was a Divine Teacher. Why do you not accept 
the teachings of Confucius, of Siddartha, of Seneca, 
of Marcus Aurelius, of Epictetus ? Because they 
were mere men, were liable to error, and did err ; 



i6o THE LITERARY LIFE 

and because they spoke without authority. What 
has given weight to the words of Christ, such weight, 
that even to-day, after nineteen hundred years, they 
are accepted as the supreme embodiment of all 
ethical teaching ? The answer is. His authority. 
The authority of a mere sage or philosopher ? Cer- 
tainly not. This would bring Him down to the level 
of a Socrates. What then ? His authority, as God. 
There is no denying it. There is no possible suppres- 
sion of the faith, latent and dormant in some minds, 
but existent in all minds, that Christ was the Son 
of the Living God. The very hatred that men bear 
to Him, their blasphemies against His adorable name, 
prove this. If He were a mere sage, the world would 
bow its head, and pass Him by. But the world knows 
He is much more ; and hence it rages against Him. 
It cannot separate His teachings from His mission. 
It cannot separate His mission from His person. It 
cannot separate His person from His Godhead. 
Whether it accepts His teachings as the supreme 
moral code of humanity, or rejects with hatred His 
teaching and His person aUke, it admits, unconsciously 
and unwillingly, the Dogma of the Incarnation. 

In the same way, professing non- dogmatists 
announce their belief in God, His attributes. His 
perfections. The moment they accept the natural 
law, or the guidance of reason, they profess their 
faith in the goodness and omniscience, the mercy 
and justice of God. For if there be a moral code, 
innate to the human soul, it cannot spring from mere 
animal nature ; nor from instinct ; nor from ex- 
perience ; nor from advanced civilization, without 



AND OTHER ESSAYS i6i 

external illumination — that is, the dogma of Divine 
Providence. If there be a moral law, directing the 
will, there must be some dogmatic influence control- 
ling the intellect. Law is universal, inexorable. 
In the organic and inorganic creations, it is the one 
thing that is most clearly in evidence. All things are 
controlled by Law, and bow to its behests. Shall the 
intellect of man alone break away from the Universe, 
and be uncontrolled ? Is it the one exception to the 
Cosmos that reigns throughout the Universe ? Who 
emancipated it from the Universal Order, and gave 
it the charter of unlicensed liberty ? Or who flung 
the reins over its neck and bade it go forth, uncurbed 
and unbridled, whilst all things else, even the superior 
will of man, have to suflfer themselves to be dragged 
into discipline and obedience by that tremendous 
centripetal force which we designate as Law in the 
inorganic and animal creation, as conscience or the 
moral sense in man. The suggestion can be advanced 
only to be repudiated. Such an irregularity would 
be opposed to all known laws. It would be a deor- 
dination in a world of Order. 

But, if the Intellect has to be curbed like all things 
else, it is quite clear that from its very nature that 
curb must be intellectual ; that is, it must submit 
to accept some primary truths of propositions, for- 
mulated by some authority, external to itself. And 
these truths, being addressed to the intellect, can 
take but one shape — that of Dogmatic Truth or 
Dogmatic Fact. What Law is therefore to the 
organic or inorganic creation, universal, inexorable, 
imperious, and even necessary, what the " moral 

M 



1 62 THE LITERARY LIFE 

sense," ** conscience,'* is to the will of man ; even 
that is Dogma to the Intellect. You may reject 
Nicene or Athanasian creeds ; you may spurn the 
Thirty-Nine Articles or other formularies. You 
cannot rid yourselves of dogma. Even Carlyle, who 
rang the changes of unlimited scorn on the early 
controversies of Christianity, was compelled to admit, 
that on the acceptance or non-acceptance of that 
one word in the Creed of Nicaea, the whole of Christi- 
anity depended. 

But if we suppose, per impossibili, that dogma 
could be suppressed, the consequences to human 
society would be disastrous. Nay, we are witnesses 
in these latter times of such disaster coming down 
upon society from the denial of dogma, and the 
repudiation of Authority. For what is Saint- Simon- 
ism, with its ugly brood of Socialists, Nihilists, 
Communists, French " SoHdaires," Italian '* Anarch- 
ists," etc., but the denial of any dogma binding the 
intellect, and the denial of moral law binding the 
will of man ? It is easy for a modern doctrinaire, 
seated at his writing-desk, surrounded by his books, 
or loHing in his reading-chair, to sweep away creeds 
and formularies, and ridicule rites and rituals that 
really belong to humanity, and must take form in 
some shape to satisfy man's needs. But, when the 
apparently harmless, speculative denunciations of 
existing beliefs or governments takes root in the minds 
of the vast army of the disappointed and discontented, 
and altars are overturned and thrones upset, men 
begin to perceive how easily theories pass into prac- 
tice, and how evil a crop may develop from poisonous 
seed. Between Carlyle, fulminating from his sound- 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 163 

proof attic in Chelsea against all existing creeds, 
governments, social life, and Karl Marx, accepting 
all this denunciation as the righteous condemnation 
of existing shams and chimeras, where is the differ- 
ence ? The appeal to " Veracities " and ** Unveraci- 
ties," when men are told that there is nothing true, 
nor genuine, nor honest, under the sun, will have the 
effect of sharpening the hunger and quieting the 
conscience of a mob, that demands an equahty which 
it will not concede, and a common proprietorship in 
goods that are not its own. And when all fear, and 
hope, and reverence are removed from the minds of 
men by the deliberate denial of every dogma, and 
therefore of all moral law, what can be expected but 
atheism in theory, and anarchy in practice ? 

There is no getting over that logical and peremp- 
tory sequence — no Dogma — no Ethics ! There is 
no binding the consciences of men by shadowy 
abstractions and vague appeals to phantom virtues, 
undefined by doctrinal truths, and unsupported by 
some supreme authority, that makes the practice of 
those virtues imperative. It lends but sanction to 
human vice and passion to say : Live noble lives, 
and quit yourselves like men in the fight ! The 
question will recur : What are noble lives ? and 
what means, ** to quit ourselves like men ? " Robin 
Hood and his merry men had their own code of 
morals : — 

** Because the good old rule 
Sufficed for them. The simple plan. 
That they shall take who have the power, 
And they shall keep, who can." 



1 64 THE LITERARY LIFE 

But Robin Hood, and every pirate and freebooter 
that ever lived, thought they were living noble, free 
lives, and certainly that they '' quitted themselves 
like men in the fight." And who shall deny that the 
world, in spite of its Pharisaism, has always had a 
secret sympathy with them, or the footpads — on a 
larger scale, whom the world calls its heroes and 
conquerors ? But will that do ? Can society hang 
together on such theories ? Or must not there be 
some voice, as of Sinai, to pronounce first, the ever- 
lasting Dogma : 

" I am the Lord, thy God," 

and then the inexorable precepts : 

'* Thou shalt," and '' Thou shalt not." 

Yes ! It is perfectly futile to say that men must lead 
clean, just, honourable lives, unless someone defines 
what are purity, justice, honour. But behind that 
definition there must be authority ; and behind that 
authority must be its credentials, founded on 
dogmatic truth. 

It may be said that all this is so clear, that, whilst 
the multitude still clings to its pleasant formula 
" Religion without creed or church," the leading 
thinkers amongst unbelievers willingly admit that 
this idea is neither logical nor reasonable. Hence, 
the curious change that has come over the tone and 
temper of unbelievers in our time. Instead of the 
fierce, bitter scorn cast upon religious belief by the 
whole French school, and imitated, to their eternal 
shame, by English scientists, there appears now a 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 165 

quiet, half-apologetic, wholly deprecatory tone, as of 
men who boasted incontinently of their security, 
and have found the ground slipping from beneath 
them. We have already seen how Carlyle modified 
his fierce, scornful invectives against the Fathers of 
the early Councils ; and now we find in Herbert 
Spencer's Autobiography ^ which may be accepted as 
his last word, and the expression of his most mature 
convictions, the following significant, if half-hearted, 
declaration, that religious creeds or cults of some 
kind is a necessity. Coming from the pen of so 
thorough an evolutionist, who has been preaching 
all his Ufe the progression of mankind by " evolution " 
and '' natural selection," and the " survival of the 
fittest," to the imaginary perfection of some millen- 
nium, they bear their own lesson : — 

" While the current creed was slowly losing its 
hold on me, the whole question seemed to be the 
truth or untruth of the particular doctrines I had 
been taught. But gradually, and especially of later 
years, I have become aware that this is not the sole 
question. Partly, the wider knowledge obtained of 
human societies has caused this. Many have, I 
believe, recognised the fact that a cult of some sort, 
with its social embodiment, is a constituent in every 
society which has made any progress. The masses of 
evidence, classified and arranged in the Descriptive 
Sociology, have forced this belief upon me indepen- 
dently, if not against my will ; still, without any 
desire to entertain it, there seems no escape from the 
inference, that the maintenance of social subordination 
has peremptorily required the aid of some such agency. 



i66 THE LITERARY LIFE 

Thus I have come to look more and more calmly 
on forms of religious belief to which I had, in earlier 
days, a profound aversion. Holding that they are 
in the main naturally adapted to their respective 
peoples and times, it now seems to me well that they 
should severally live and work as long as the con- 
ditions permit ; and further, that sudden changes 
of religious institutions, as of political institutions, 
are certain to be followed by reactions. Largely, 
however, if not chiefly, this change of feeling towards 
religious creeds and their sustaining institutions has 
resulted from a deepening conviction that the sphere 
occupied by them can never he an unfilled sphere ; but 
that there must continue to arise afresh the great 
questions concerning ourselves and surrounding 
things ; and that, if not positive answers, then modes 
of consciousness standing in place of positive answers, 
must ever remain. By those who know muchj more 
than by those who know little ^ is there felt the need 
for explanation. Thus religious creeds, which in 
one way or other occupy the sphere that rational 
interpretation seeks to occupy and fails, and fails the 
more the more it seeks^ I have come to regard with a 
S3rmpathy, based on community of need, feeling that 
dissent from them results from inability to accept the 
solutions offered, joined with the wish that solutions 
could be found." 

Why Herbert Spencer did not move a step further 
and perceive that if the laws of right and wrong are 
eternal and unchangeable, the cultus which sub- 
ordinates human passion to such laws must be 
formed and based on eternal and unchangeable truth. 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 167 

and not allowed to change, and shift, and modify 
itself to suit merely human exigencies, is a problem 
that his Autobiography does not solve ; and remaining 
insoluble now for ever, it is another proof of the 
limitations that will always surround the highest 
philosophic conceptions when unilluminated by 
Divine Faith. But his testimony is at least valuable 
as a corroboration of our thesis — and all the more 
valuable as the result — the unwelcome result — of an 
experience of eighty years. 



THE MOONLIGHT OF MEMORY 

IX 

** The moonlight of memory ! " 

The phrase is not mine. It is a favourite expression 
of that greatest of German humanists — Jean Paul 
Richter. And it is a very beautiful one ; because 
memory undoubtedly does cast a strange, uncanny, 
wistful Ught over events which, in the broad sunlight 
of experience, had sometimes very little of poetry or 
tenderness in them. And it is very strange that, as 
we advance in years, old times, old faces, old scenes, 
that seemed to have been blurred over or entirely 
blotted out in our adolescence, have a new resurrec- 
tion in our memory and stand out clear and 
distinct as the figures in a stereoscope against the 
dark background of the past. How beautifully, for 
example, do the plain, prosaic, limestone walls of the 
old Market-House in Mallow, which crowned and 
terminated the New Street in which I was born, 
stand out in the diorama, which memory unrolls 
from out the side-scenes of the little theatre of my 
existence ! How well I remember it in the sunlight 
and in the moonlight — the exact flat stone which we 
singled out for our balls ; the niches which were 
such a sore trouble to us ; the old weighing-machine ; 
the vast and tremendous circuses whose splendours, 

168 



THE LITERARY LIFE AND OTHER ESSAYS 169 

as of Arabian Nights, were hidden within under 
locked and closed gates. How romantic now, seen 
in the light of memory, was the dear old glen, where 
we first learned the art of poetry in its wild flowers : 
the primroses and the cowslips, and the wild hya- 
cinths, whose fragrance, like the perfume that hangs 
around old letters, comes back to us across the years ; 
and the brook, narrowing and broadening, which we 
leaped in the summer time, and whose flags we wove 
into tiny boats, and where we fished for collies and 
sticklebacks ; and where we wondered at the gor- 
geous dragon-flies that swam and sang in the air on 
the hot summer-days ; and the Httle chalet on the 
cUfl", with its fringe of firs, which looked so beautiful 
and poetical against the sunset ; and the song of the 
cuckoo, echoing the lines of Wordsworth ; and the 
ditch overhead, where many a summer evening we 
watched and envied the little batches of Fenians 
going up to drill in the dark recesses of Buckley's 
wood. For that sublime and sacred feeHng that took 
these tradesmen away from work and pleasure, was 
also the passion of our youth. The shadow of '48, 
and the wild music that came out of the shadow, 
were upon us ; and we were watching with beating 
hearts and kindling eyes the prelude of '67. 

I have quoted elsewhere a little experience of mine 
on one of the dark winter nights of the year '65 . 
I see now, as clearly as I saw then, the short well-knit 
figure of a ballad singer in the Main Street ; I see 
the gas-light from the shop flickering on his coat ; 
I see the coat shining and gUstening because the rain 
was pouring in cataracts on his clothes ; I see his 



170 THE LITERARY LIFE 

face, pale but stern-looking, his black hair falling 
down in ringlets on his shoulders ; the short black 
moustache ; the right hand hidden away in his 
breast ; I hear his fine voice ringing up along the 
deserted street that fine ballad (I often wonder who 
is the Innominatus that wrote it), called in Irish 
Anthologies, " The Fenian Men." I remember how 
it thrilled us to hear the words : 

" But once more returning, within our veins burning 
The fires that illumined dark Aherlow's glen ; 
We raise the old cry anew. Slogan of Con and Hugh, 
Out and make way for the bold Fenian men ! " 

And how we agreed to tear ourselves away from the 
fascination, and post ourselves as vedettes up along 
the street from Tuckey's corner to Fair Lane, lest 
the poHce should come on him unawares and arrest 
him. For we knew that he was a Fenian emissary, 
and that he had work on hands that night, besides 
singing. 

There was another agent of the Brotherhood, who 
came and went in a secret, but to us, most fascinating 
manner, who used gather us boys into a corner of 
that old Market-House, and pour floods of hot 
rebellion into our eager minds. It was from his lips 
I first heard those noble ballads of Thomas Davis : 
" When on Ramillies' bloody field ; " and that superb 
song that ought to be familiar to every Irish boy and 
girl : " The Battle-eve of the Brigade." It was not 
only that he hummed and recited and taught us these 
fine songs ; but he dramatised them. He showed u^ 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 171 

the French lines stretching along one side of the glen, 
the Irish Brigade in the centre ; he showed us the 
men sleeping around their camp-fires, the remnants 
of the Wild Geese who had fought on the walls of 
Limerick ; he showed us the mess-tent in the centre, 
the canvas flapping, the lamps hanging down from 
the poles ; the swords and shakoes of the officers 
on pegs at the sides ; the long table, loaded with 
glasses and decanters ; the Irish officers with un- 
buttoned uniforms, drinking and carousing till the 
dawn. We saw the tall figure of Count Thomond at 
the head, *' straight as an uplifted lance." We heard 
the toasts. 

'* Mark the words ! " our strange and fugitive 
mentor used to say ; *' mark the toasts and how the 
captains received them : 

* Here's a health to King James ! and 
they bent as they quaffed ! * 

That was Shemus the coward ! the fellow that ran 
away from the Boyne, and left behind him the men, 
who cried : ' Change kings, and we'll fight you 
again ! * But there's the Irish always, making fools 
of themselves about kings and queens, and leaders 
who betray them I ' They bent as they quaffed ! ' 
They didn't cheer ! Oh, no ! They couldn't do that ! 
But you see they had a soft corner in their hearts 
for the Stuarts who betrayed them ! But look at the 
second toast : — 

* Here's to George the Elector ! and fiercely they 
laughed ! ' 



172 THE LITERARY LIFE 

Of course they did ! That was George, the English 
king ! How they wished they could meet him on 
the morrow ! Look at the third toast : — 

* Good luck to the girls we loved long ago, 
Where the Shannon and Barrow and Blackwater 

flow/ 

" What do they do now ? Nothing at all. They 
had something else, besides girls, to be thinking 
about that night, those warriors and captains of the 
Brigade ! Ah, but now look at the last toast : — 

* God prosper all Ireland ! ' 

" What did they do now ? Did they rise up and 
throw their helmets in the air, and shout and make 
fools of themselves, as you see men doing to-day ? 
NO ! But they put down their glasses in silence on 
the table ; and their faces grew as white as a girl's 
who has seen a ghost, and they covered their eyes 
with their hands. What does Davis say ? 

* You'd think them afraid 

So pale grew the chiefs of the Irish Brigade I * 

** That's just it ! That's the finest dramatic touch 
in all poetry ! Look at them, boys ! Look at them ! 
The forty captains of the Irish Brigade, their faces 
white, the?r hands trembhng, their hearts throbbing ! 
And why ? Because the sorrow of Ireland and the 
sadness of Ireland, and her eternal hopes always and 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 173 

ever defeated, have come down on them ! And 
because they remember what a Httle thing was 
between them and victory ! And because they think, 
if they had listened to the voice of their Bishop and 
the Franciscan Friar, who told them hold out to the 
end, all would have been different ! Ah, yes ! 
Look at them ! Look at them ! and beUeve me, boys, 
you needn't much mind the man who flings his 
caubeen in the air and yells and shouts, and says 
he*ll shed the last drop of his blood for Ireland ! 
But whenever you hear : God save Ireland ! or God 
prosper old Ireland ! and you see a man's fingers 
twitching, and his teeth clenching, and the lines 
drawing down on his face, and the colour flying from 
his cheeks ; ah, yes, boys, mind him ! " 

Strange to say, it was an exact picture of the men 
in whose Brotherhood he was enrolled. For that 
was one characteristic of those Fenians. They were 
silent, strong men, into whose character some stern 
and terrible energy seemed to have been infused. 
There were no braggarts amongst them. Their 
passion was too deep for words ; and that passion 
was an all-consuming, fierce, unswerving and un- 
selfish love for Ireland. They did not love their 
motherland because she gave them a scrap of her 
bogs, or fields, or mountains, or because they could 
sell her interests at a brigand's valuation ; but because 
she was Ireland, and she had wrongs to be avenged 
and sorrows to be redressed ; and, because they 
hoped, every man and boy among them, to see the 
day when they would help to crown that dear old 
motherland with the royal symbols of independence. 



174 THE LITERARY LIFE 

Yes ! in truth, the blood runs freely in the veins of 
youth, and our veins ran fire under the stimulus of 
that glorious passion. With what scorn we drowned 
some wretched music-hall song about " A dark girl 
dressed in blue " with the ringing notes of 

" Viva la ! the New Brigade ! 
Viva la ! the old one too ; 
Viva la ! the rose shall fade, 
And the Shamrock shine for ever new ! " 

And how we whispered amongst ourselves awful 
secrets about certain places along the Railway 
Embankment, where coffins, filled with well-greased 
rifle barrels were stored. At that time in Mallow 
football was almost unknown. Hurling and handball 
in winter, cricket in summer, were the universal 
games. Every lane, every street had its cricket-club ; 
and high above all, and dominating all, was the 
M.C.C., the magic letters that floated on the flag 
that hung above the little shanty in the cricket field 
that lies to the east of the monastery. That club 
was then the most formidable in the South of Ireland. 
It had won victories everywhere ; beaten military 
and city clubs beyond number ; and its members 
were heroes in our sight — Curtin, the Captain ; 
George and Harry Foote, demon bowlers ; Pat 
Kelly, the slow bowler, whose deadly " twists '* were 
feared more than the cannonading of the Footes ; 
Joss Mullane, the famous backstop ; Micka Roche, 
the favourite batsman, and Bill O'Brien, the genial 
giant, whose mighty feat of sending a ball over the 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 175 

Courthouse walls from the centre of the cricket- 
grounds is remembered to this day. What then 
must have been the mighty attraction that took us, 
schoolboys, away from such an arena on a certain 
hot summer afternoon, and flung us, a wild dis- 
ordered mass, into the public streets ? Nothing but 
the report that the police had surrounded the house 
of John SulHvan, at the corner of Carmichael's Lane, 
had placed him under arrest, and were searching 
every room for papers. We were not disappointed. 
The whole town was out ; and there, inside his shop 
window, we could see the prisoner, erect as usual 
and unconcerned, and chatting gaily with the crowd 
of constables that filled the house. He had on his 
usual white coat (he was a baker), and was stroking 
his short American-cut beard. Presently, the District- 
Inspector came down stairs. He had found nothing 
to compromise the prisoner. No wonder. Every 
second man amongst the constables present was a 
sworn Fenian. 

One beautiful August night the following summer, 
1866, a group of four young lads walked up and down 
the Main Street from Tuckey's Hill to Chapel Lane 
and back. It was a glorious night, the moonlight 
flooding the whole street without throwing a shadow 
from the houses. They were chatting about a hundred 
things. Then the Town Clock struck ten ; and 
just at Tuckey's Hill they paused, and the central 
figure said to the present writer, who was then home 
from St. Colman's for his first holidays : 

" What are you going to do with yourself ? " 

** I suppose the Church ! " I said. 



176 THE LITERARY LIFE 

" Ah ! " he said, with a sigh, " that was my idea 
also ; and I haven't had much happiness since I 
abandoned it." 

It was James O'Brien, the Captain in the Revolu- 
tionary Forces, although he cannot have been more 
than eighteen years old. How well I remember him — 
the strong, square face, dimpled all over with curious 
lines, when he smiled ; the tall, sinewy, athletic 
figure ; the broad shoulders ; the erect figure and 
military gait of the boy — Ay de mi ! what might have 
been ? 

A few months later, when the snow was some feet 
thick upon the ground, he put aside his civilian jacket 
and, like Emmet, donned his green uniform ; slung 
his revolvers around his neck ; slipped unobserved 
from the house, and trudged along the six miles to 
Ballynockin, where he met Captain Mackey and a 
contingent of absolutely unarmed men from Cork. 
They brought out the women and children from the 
police barrack ; and as the men refused to surrender, 
they instantly set fire to the place. The sergeant 
and four constables were only saved from a terrible 
death by the intervention of the curate (Canon 
Neville), who commanded the police to surrender 
at once, and he would exonerate them from all blame 
before their superiors. Then a detachment of military 
stationed at Purcell's of Dromore came up, and the 
unarmed Fenians dispersed. I'he next day James 
O'Brien was arrested and lodged in Mallow Bridewell 
for three weeks awaiting his trial. 

A pitch dark night the following winter, somewhere 
before or after Christmas, I found myself in Cork. 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 177 

It was an awful night, the rain falling in torrents. 
For some reason I wished to see Mrs. O'Brien — what 
the reason was I cannot remember now. I hired a 
covered-car, and bade the driver take me to Mrs. 
O'Brien's, Nile Street. He seemed reluctant ; but 
he gave way. Half-way down King Street he stopped 
and tapped at the window. I let it down. He put 
his face through the aperture, and whispered : 

*' Do you mane the Captain's, sor ? " 

I said, yes ! and we drove on ; and James O'Brien, 
the chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, passed 
out of my life. Once afterwards I heard that at a 
certain Commercial Ball in Cork he created quite 
a sensation as he walked into the room, a green 
rosette on his breast, and a fair young girl hanging 
on his arm. I wonder could it have been " Brigid " 
of the Nation, the hidden and unappreciated writer 
of the best dramatic poem, " Sentenced to Death," 
and the best piece of Irish humour, *' How Tom 
Bourke became a Zouave," that we possess in Anglo- 
Irish literature. 

Like many another genius, which has needed years 
and a theatre for its development, his brother William, 
the great tribune of after years, was comparatively 
obscured ; but even then, slow of speech, he was 
known to be desperately tenacious of purpose. The 
first man, curiously enough, to recognise his hidden 
talent was a Mr. Wright, a Protestant classical 
teacher, who foretold brilliant scholarship from the 
pages of Latin composition that his young pupil 
presented to him. 

The following March, that of ever-memorable '67, 

N 



178 THE LITERARY LIFE 

was unusually severe. F At the middle of the'month 
the snow was thick upon the ground, and the long 
flanks and high peaks of the Galtees were a mass of 
glistening crystals. It amused us, young rebels in 
St. Colman's, to see or pretend we saw the dark files 
of the Fenians silhouetted against the virgin back- 
ground of the hills, and the red patches of the British 
regiments in the rear. But then one day came in a 
report that the Fenians had been surrounded in 
Kilclooney wood, and had been overpowered and 
annihilated. Gradually the news filtered down until 
it touched reality, that Peter O'Neill Crowley had 
been killed with English bullets on the banks of the 
mountain stream ; that he had previously ordered 
his companions to flee and save themselves ; that it 
was only at his earnest entreaties Captains Kelly and 
McClure consented to fly ; and that then the brave 
man fought a whole British regiment and a posse of 
poHce, dodging from tree to tree, and firing steadily 
on the advancing enemy, until his ammunition was 
exhausted ; and he fell pierced with bullets, God 
having given him time enough to receive the last 
Sacraments at the hands of Father Tim O'Connell, 
then curate at Mitchelstown. 

I remember well the evening on which that remark- 
able funeral took place. It was computed that at 
least fivQ thousand men took part in the procession 
and shouldered the coffin of the dead patriot over 
mountain and valley and river, until they placed the 
sacred burden down there near the sea and under the 
shadow of the church at Ballymacoda. I remember 
how a group of us, young lads, shivered in the cold 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 179 

March wind there on the College Terrace at Fermoy, 
and watched the dark masses of men swaying over 
the bridge, the yellow coffin conspicuous in their 
midst. We caught another gUmpse of the funeral 
cortege as it passed the Sergeant's Lodge ; then we 
turned away with tears of sorrow and anger in our 
eyes. 

A great strength and fierce force lay in all these men. 
They were in desperate and deadly earnest. They 
seldom smiled or jested during those momentous 
years. They always wore the same grim look of 
settled determination. It was life or death that was 
in the balance. They walked under the shadow of 
the scaffold. 

Two years later, one of these men, who had been 
sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered, James 
F. X. O'Brien, visited the Presentation Convent in 
Fermoy to see his sister, who was a nun there ; and 
the Bishop, who was in Fermoy at the time, had 
asked the liberated patriot to dine at the College. 
Probably at that time Dr. Keane was the most popular 
and well-beloved Bishop in Ireland. He deserved 
it. He had the reputation of being a strong, almost 
an extreme Nationalist. I was too young to under- 
stand. I only knew that the newspapers were fond 
of quoting some words which he addressed to the 
students at the Irish College, Paris. 

" Gentlemen, remember that your first duty is 
to your God ; the second to your country ! " 

The Irish memory was then tenacious, and fond 
of treasuring up the words of its great men. A few 
words in another direction sent another Bishop (a 



i8o THE LITERARY LIFE 

very great and a very holy^man) down to his grave 
under a storm of obloquy and hate. 

This evening Mr. O'Brien was late for dinner, 
which was half gone through when he arrived. The 
little quiet figure dressed in gray had stolen half-way 
up the hall when he was observed. The whole body 
of priests and students sprang to their feet, and gave 
him an ovation that a king might envy. 

During these vacations from our seminary course, 
we had to witness sometimes strange scenes. Probably 
the most pathetic, if we had known it, were the borough 
elections. It was then, and up to 1882, when William 
O'Brien broke the evil spell for ever, a mere contest 
between two landlords, one Liberal, one Conservative, 
both caring equally little for the country or the people. 
Sir Denham Norreys, the local magnate, held the 
borough for thirty years. To my imagination, he 
was the embodiment and impersonation of the 
haughty aristocrat. He was an old man then ; but 
his slight figure, his gold glasses, and, above all, his 
magnificent gait and carriage, as he walked up the 
Main Street, seemed to my youthful fancy the type 
of old-world haute noblesse ^ in whom it would be a 
condescension to speak to an ordinary mortal. I 
remember how everyone stepped oflt the sidewalk 
as he approached, and how he looked neither to the 
right hand nor to the left, and never spoke to the 
commonality. He came in for a good deal of rough 
handling at the elections ; and it was remarkable that 
even then he never seemed to lose that splendid 
hauteur of manner. Once a local solicitor, and a 
very clever man, was speaking from the broad window 



AND OTHER ESSAYS i8i 

at the left-hand corner of Fair Lane, and he said, as 
I well remember : 

'* He calls himself Sir Denham Norreys ; but I 
call him Sir Damn Nonsense ! " 

We thought the stars would fall. But there it was — 
Norreys v. Longfield for years ; and a squadron of 
huzzars, sabres drawn, marching two and two up 
along the street the whole day long ; and three 
hundred police massed around the Court House the 
day of the polling — all to keep these poor Irish fools 
from murdering one another ! But the secret fires 
were burning also in young hearts at the time. 

It was quite a revelation in after life to find that 
the proud aristocrat, the seeming embodiment of 
racial and sectarian ascendancy, was the same Sir 
Denham who was O'Connell's chief supporter during 
his many conflicts in the House of Commons ; and 
that later on he served under the banner of Gladstone. 

Just before the Fenian rising in '67, Serjeant 
Sullivan was made SoHcitor- General for Ireland, 
and he had to find a seat. And where but in his 
native Mallow ? He came, saw, and conquered. 
He was made Attorney-General, and had to be re- 
elected. He came, saw, and conquered again. But 
the elections were hotly contested ; and party feeling 
ran very high. He was a good popular speaker ; 
and he had some clever tricks in catching the popular 
imagination. The ballad-singers sang : 

" Hurrah for Sullivan ! He's the man 
That will chase the fox through Duhallow. 
He's now come forth to lead the Van. 
He's one of the Rakes of Mallow." 



iSz THE LITERARY LIFE 

Small boys wrote orders (unlimited) for porter on 
copy-book leaves, which orders were honoured by 
every publican. The successful lawyer leaped from 
the backs of a poor, servile people, from the bar to 
the bench, from the bench to the Woolsack. And 
then — passed into oblivion. For it is a remarkable 
fact, and one that I should like to impress on the minds 
of our youthful generations, that the Muse of Irish 
History has a curious knack of blotting out with her 
thumb every name, no matter how illustrious for a 
moment, that has not served the cause of the mother- 
land, while she embalms for ever in her pages the 
very humblest who have given their lives to the 
sacred cause. I suppose not one man in a million 
to-day could tell the name of the judge who sen- 
tenced the Manchester martyrs to death ; and every 
schoolboy knows the names of Allen, Larkin and 
O'Brien. Who can tell the names of all the distin- 
guished Judges, Attorney- Generals, Crown Advocates, 
Serjeants-at-Law, who prosecuted or sentenced the 
patriots of '98, or '48, or '67 ? And who can forget 
Emmet, Wolfe Tone, the Shears, Mitche!, Martin, 
Kickham ? And so, too, the little town there by the 
Blackwater has given men to the Woolsack and the 
Bench ; to the Church ; to medicine ; to art ; and 
to history. Yet, no one asks where these men are 
buried ; or cares to see the places where they were 
born. But every schoolboy can point out where 
Thomas Davis first saw the light ; and the high house 
in Ballydahin where William O'Brien spent his early 
days. And I often wondered whether that distin- 
guished lawyer from Mallow, who wore the Lord 



AND OTHER J ESSAYS 183 

Chancellor's robes, was able to shut out altogether 
that terrible name " Scorpion Sullivan," that made 
a hissing in all men's ears after the State Trials of 
'67 in Cork ? For I remember well that even while 
the mob were shouting '* Hosannas ! " after his 
carriage on the eve of his election in Mallow, I heard 
some bitter things said by white-faced young men 
about '* castle-hacks " and " purchased slaves " ; 
and I knew that these young fellows turned away 
in disgust from the porter-sodden and degraded 
canaille of the streets to grease their rifles up there 
in Carmichael's Lane, or speculate, as they watched 
the dragoons passing by, how easily the axe of the 
croppy-pike could cut the bridles, and how easily 
the steel hook could bring the trooper to the earth ; 
and how easily the pike with its rudle-point could 
do the rest. They were dreamers of dreams, of 
course ; but they were superior to the poor slaves, 
whose hands had closed down on ill-gotten gold, or 
the poor wretches who debauched themselves with 
cheap drink, and thought they were serving their 
country ! 

The relations between Protestants and Catholics 
were all this time exceeedingly happy and cordial. 
The only occasion on which some little friction took 
place was when the Protestant Rector or church- 
wardens first attempted to close the burial-ground 
around the Protestant Church and in the interior of 
the ruins of the old CathoHc Church dedicated to 
Saint Anne. The attempt made on this occasion was 
frustrated in a singular manner, although in after 
years, on sanitary grounds, it succeeded. 



1 84 THE LITERARY LIFE 

During the summer evenings, a little man, clad 
like a sailor in blue blouse and white nankeen or linen 
trousers, used put in an appearance just at the corner 
of Fair Street and right opposite the entrance gate to 
the Protestant church. His face was deeply marked, 
and he looked insignificant enough ; but his feats of 
strength, for it was these he came to exhibit, hoping 
to earn a few pence thereby, were very remarkable, 
and showed uncommon muscular and nervous power. 
One of the feats was the lifting of a half-hundred 
weight to the level of his head, and holding it aloft 
in that position whilst he walked rapidly along the 
streets to the great bridge that spanned the Black- 
water, and back again to the point from which he 
started, altogether a distance of three-quarters of a 
mile. 

This evening, just before giving the usual exhibition 
of strength, an immense funeral was seen slo^vly 
coming up the Main Street. It halted at the church 
gate, which was locked and bolted. Clearly this was 
expected. The sexton, acting under orders, refused 
to allow the funeral cortege to pass. There was deep 
anger and indignation written on the faces of the 
people ; and after some moments of indecision, it 
was clear they were about to take the law into their 
own hands. Amongst them were the Mallow butchers 
— the Gracchi of their age — the fiercest, strongest, 
loyalest men that ever took up a cause. Just whilst 
they were hesitating, the Httle sailor athlete pushed 
his way through the crowd, and struck the gate one 
violent blow straight from the shoulder. Whether 
it was that the lock was worn and rusty, or the impact 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 185 

very great, the great iron gate yielded and swung 
back ; and the tumultuous crowd, with a suppressed 
cheer, broke into the avenue. No legal action was 
taken, but probably the little sailor got sixpences 
for pennies that night. 

And may I not embalm, and preserve from utter 
oblivion, in these hot and hasty times, the names of 
the humbler, yet picturesque celebrities, who haunted 
the streets of Mallow during these days, and who 
came prominently to the front during election times, 
and were well known at fair, market, and cross — Bill 
Shehane, the giant, who always inherited the boots 
and cast-off integuments of another giant, old Homan 
Haines ; Bill Shehane, who knocked down with one 
blow a furious and dangerous bull in the Big meadow, 
and then cried chivalrously : '* Get up you, you son 
of a gun, I never struck a man down " ; Stephen the 
Fool, who once swallowed a live mouse for the pre- 
mium of sixpence and the delectation of the Club 
gentleman ; Jack the Manager ; Davy the Lady ; 
Biddy Black ; Peg Mack ; Ellen Gorman, of the 
Cakes ; and last, not least, Kitty Moss, the terror of 
our childhood. 

And in higher circles of society, there were that 
giant priest, the typical soggart of the past, Justin 
McCarthy, mighty in stature, and great of heart, the 
hero of two tithe wars, the foe of felonious landlordism, 
who revenged an eviction in his parish by putting a 
price of one shilling per head on every fox^s head 
that was brought to his hall- door. And the gentle 
Abbe Moriarty, with the seraphic face and the long 
white hair, who, we firmly believed, saw the heavens 



i86 THE LITERARY LIFE AND OTHER ESSAYS 

opened, when, on Sunday mornings, he preached, 
and the beautiful vestments which he had brought 
from Dieppe shone in the sunlight, and the magnifi- 
cent chalice glittered on the altar. And Father Danger 
(Murphy), theologian and catechist without rival or 
equal, whom we looked at with such awe and venera- 
tion ; and the saintly Denis O'Connell, just passed 
to his reward ; and Father P. Horgan, young, gifted, 
accomplished, who trained our choir on the one hand, 
and was inexorable to Sunday-school truants on the 
other. He is still, happily, with us ; but the others — 
alas ! all gone, swallowed up in the night of oblivion 
or rather shall we say, basking in the eternal sunshine 
of an eternal day ? 



LENTEN TIME IN DONERAILE 

X 

The Stations are over ; and we are in Holy Week. 
Like all other human things, if laborious, the memory 
of them is pleasant. It is no joke to get up at an 
unearthly hour in the morning, and to speed, in very 
variable weather, seven or eight miles to the house 
where the Station is to be held. Sometimes, after 
snow, the ground is so slippery we have to pick our 
steps. Sometimes Boreas thunders from the north, 
out between the mountain chasms, and across the 
bleak March landscape. Sometimes the south wind 
comes up, with its soft, sweet, heavy burden of rain. 
But at all times one is glad to get in sight of the 
farmers' cottage, known and recognised afar off by 
its fresh coat of white- wash, and the Httle group of 
men waiting in the haggart before the door There 
is a cheery welcome from the master — the husband 
or the eldest son ; a careful picking of our footsteps 
across the muddy yard, carpeted with fresh straw ; 
a bark of warning from the vigilant colUe ; a still more 
warm welcome from the vanithee, and then we settle 
down to work. I generally leave the " parlour " to 
my curate. I prefer the seat by the open hearth, 
where piles of timber and coal, and occasionally a 
heap of mountain turf, light and heat the whole 

187 



i88 THE LITERARY LIFE 

kitchen. And here is the " sugan " chair, made of 
twisted hay ; but the vanithee rushes out with a grand, 
new, horse-haired, well-springed one, and snatches 
the humble seat swiftly away. Right opposite me, 
a withered, venerable woman stoops to catch a little 
heat for her poor congealed veins. Her beads hang 
down as they roll through her fingers. Here, quite 
close, are the three junior scions of the house, their 
faces shining from soap and the fire, their pinafores 
spotless, and with great wonder in their eyes at the 
awful apparition of the priest. Silently and reverently, 
one by one, the penitents come and kneel on the hard 
paving stones, bend their heads till their hair touches 
your face, and make their simple confession. Then 
the little lecture, the Holy Mass, heard so reverently 
and humbly. All is still as death, save the cackling 
of a hen in the yard, or the swift carol of a blackbird 
out on the ash tree beyond. The station Ust is called ; 
the " pleasant word " is said ; and then the breakfast. 
It is a pretty poor business in Lent, though since we 
got the dispensation for butter, it is not quite so bad. 
And the vanithee, with great pity for the young 
priests, sidles over and whispers : — 

** Wisha, yer reverence, what about a couple of 
eggs ? It is a long drive, and a cowld morning." 

We shake our heads ; and the talk goes round, 
with one or two of the neighbours who have come 
in to help us ; and it is all about the ** Lague,'* or 
the Landlord, or the new taxes, or the Land Courts. 
And it is sad and almost desperate to see these poor 
people toiling from dawn to dark to make the ** rint " ; 
but ** Hope springs eternal in the human breast,** 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 189 

and there is a perennial fountain of hope in the hearts 
of these people.^ " Well, sure God is good ! " There 
is the ultimate syllable on the Irish tongue — faith, 
deep, profound, unshakable in the eternal clemency 
and protection of God. 

And so, cheerful enough after our cup of tea, we 
bid " Good-bye ! " to our good hosts, until 

" Give Mary your blessin', your reverence ; she's 
goin' to America next week." 

My heart sinks down into my boots. America ! 
America ! draining the life-blood of Ireland. All 
that is fair, and beautiful, and healthy, going ; and 
all that is old, and decrepit, and imbecile, left behind. 
I cannot help saying angrily : — 

" Why can't she stop at home ? " 

*' Wisha, yer reverence, what's there for her ? 
We have enough to do ; and sure the sisters in Boston 
have paid her passage, and will meet her whin landin'." 

There is no use replying. With a surly look and 
bad grace I place my hand on the thick auburn hair 
of the poor child ; and my curate wonders all the 
way home why I am so silent and distracted. I 
cannot help it. This whole modern and universal 

* Their trust in Providence has been vindicated. The above 
lines were written while the old evil system of dual ownership 
was still in operation. Under the beneficent influence of the 
Land Purchase Act of 1903, the landlord system has now quite 
disappeared from the parish, and the soil has become the people's 
own property. The results are abundantly evident already in 
their greater cheerfulness and comfort, the neatness of their 
homes and their increased enterprise in developing the resources 
of the soil. " The Lague " is still a power in the parish, but it 
is a League for completing the pacification of the country by 
combining Irishmen of all creeds in the cause of their common 
native land. 



190 THE LITERARY LIFE 

exodus from their native land is maddening. I know 
it is the genius of the race. We were always exiles 
and wanderers. We got the evil impetus from our 
Scythian forefathers, who struck and pitched their 
tents of skins from the Balkans to the Urals, and from 
the Danube to the Ganges. It was the same nomadic 
spirit that drove Dathi and his soldiers across Europe 
in their terrible crusade of fire, until their mighty king 
was smitten, from Heaven, under the snows of the 
Alps. It was the same spirit that bade Brendan seek 
the Western World ; and his companions the forests 
of France and Germany. Down there on the Kerry 
coast, near Smerwick, where Grey de Wilton mas- 
sacred the four hundred Spaniards who laid down 
their arms, depending on his word of honour, you 
still may see the beehive cells where the ancient 
Irish monks rested on their couches of rushes — cells 
so constructed for this race of mighty ascetics that 
the monk could neither stand nor he. And there is 
the same eternal sea, where they found their choir- 
stalls, for there up to their armpits in the freezing 
waters they stood at midnight, and sent up their 
penitential chaunts to Heaven, with no organ accom- 
paniment but that of howling winds and thundering 
waves. But were these ascetics of the Irish Thebaid 
content with this ? No ! After thirty or forty years 
of this violence to Heaven, the old Celtic spirit seized 
them, and '' peregrinari pro Christo ! "^ on their lips, 
up they arose, and on these frail coracles, such as 
those you may still see in Kerry and Arran — poor, 
fragile, Nautilus-boats, canvas stretched on a few 

* To go abroad for Christ's sake. 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 191 

planks, they went forth to France and Germany ; 
and the weaker races shuddered before their Libyan 
austerities, and clamoured for the milder rules of 
Benedict, in place of the awful penalism of these 
Irish Culdees. And that is the reason, you know, 
why the Benedictines have never thriven in Ireland. 

Well ! " peregrinari ! peregrinari I " there is still 
the destiny of the race. Alas ! that we should say 
it : It is no longer '^peregrinari pro Christo ! " but 
" peregrinari pro Mammona ! " Ah ! yes ! the dear 
old Spartan simplicity of Irish peasant life is yielding 
to the seductions of the Zeitgeist : we want the city, 
and the electric light, and the saloon, and the ball- 
room. There's the secret of Irish emigration ! 

Well, weVe finished the rounds of Stations. We 
have trodden on historic, or semi-historic ground. 
We have passed by the two Danish moats under the 
old frontier keep of Shinagh, near Waterdyke ; have 
skirted Ballinamona, the ancient seat of the Nagles, 
one of whom, Elizabeth Nagle, married Spenser, 
the poet (see Lowell on the English poets). In this 
house, too, lived George Bond Lowe, who was fired 
at eighty years ago, whence originated the famous 
** Doneraile Conspiracy Trial," in the evolutions of 
which O'Connell won his brightest laurels. Who 
has not heard of his journey by coach from Cahir- 
civeen, his relays by the way, his appearance in Cork 
Courthouse, to the utter dismay of the Solicitor- 
General, his breakfast on the dry loaf of bread, 
interrupted between every bite by his exclamation : 
" That's not law, sir ! " the saving of the poor victims 
from the gallows, by his marvellous eloquence ; their 



192 



THE LITERARY LIFE 



transportation — ah, yes ! it all comes back, for here 
are their grand-children in my parish to-day. And 
down there across the Awbeg, whose silver is now 
gleaming in the morning sunlight, is the spot where 
Father O'Neill was horsewhipped by Captain St. 
Leger ; and when the old priest shrank from pro- 
secution, Curran forced him into it, took up the cause 
of the old man without fee or reward, except that it 
laid the first stone of an immortal reputation. Here, 
too, is Carker (career, a prison), where my prede- 
cessor. Father Tighe Daly, lived in 1688, one of the 
priests who had to be duly registered, and his good 
conduct guaranteed by two solvent securities. Here 
is the copy of his registration, culled from the Rolls 
Office, Dublin Castle : 



No. 



Name 



Age 



Where 
Ordained 



By Whom 



Place of 
Residence 



Of what parishes 

is he the pretended 

Parish Priest 



Tighe 
Daly 



67 



Rheims 



The 
Archbishop 
of Rheims 



Carker 



Caherduggan, 

Doneraile, 

Templersan. 



Securities — Arthur O'Keeffe, Ballymohill, 

and 

Another 



1^0 each. 



Back here in the defiles of the black mountains is 
a favourite spot of mine, Tooreen. You can see it 
gleaming — a little green patch against the sombre 
setting of the purple hills ; — and it stretches deep 
down into the brown valleys, where the stream, turbid 
with flood-wrack, wine-coloured from the peat, or 
crystal in the mild summer time, forever break the 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 193 

silence and monotony of these wilds. And here dwell 
a simple, hardy race, leading a kind of monastic life 
in their solitudes, and rarely venturing beyond the 
seclusion of their valleys, except to Mass on Sundays 
or holidays. I had heard of them long before I ever 
thought I should be their pastor. From far before 
the famine years, when the population was ten times 
what it is to-day, their reputation has come down 
unbroken, as being the very first, winter and summer 
alike, to enter the Church on Sunday morning. They 
are seven miles away — no roads from the inner fast- 
nesses of the mountains — yet here they are at half- 
past seven on Sunday morning, eager for the Mass 
that is to cast its halo of blessing over their labours 
of the coming week. I tell them they ought to be 
holy — they are so near to God. Yet here, too, the 
fever of emigration has penetrated ; and in New York 
and Indiana, up and down the cities of the States, 
are the children of the mist and the cloud, thinking, 
perhaps, sometimes of the purple heather and the 
bracken, and wondering will they ever see it again. 

" From this spot, yer reverence," says old Dan 
Magrath, the woodranger, '' you can see the five 
counties." 

So you can. The sea to the south, the Shannon to 
the West ; and in the east Knoclvmeldown, beneath 
whose conical summits nestles the Mecca of the 
Irish — the Monastery of Melleray. And far in front 
stretches a vast landscape, broken by ridges that run 
parallel to one another, but transverse, here from 
the mountains to the sea. It is dotted all over with 
white farm houses, from v/hich the blue smoke, this 

M 



194 THE LITERARY LIFE 

calm March morning, curls upwards to the sky. 
The smell of Spring is in the air, blended with the 
pungent aroma of peat and wood fires, carried to us 
across the wide lowlands ; the cattle are browsing 
lazily in the far meadows ; now and again you can 
hear the bark of a watch dog far away, or the song of 
some colleen or bouchal, as they pass down to the 
creamery ; and all Heaven over your head is resonant 
with the raptures of the larks, who fling down the 
dews from their exultant wings and the pearls of 
music from their throats that gasp with exuberant 
melody. And this is Ireland ? Yes ! And there, 
down there in the lowland, and here in the mountain 
defiles, are Celts ? Yes, every one ! But was it not 
here, even in this very valley of Tooreen, that Spenser 
saw the ghosts coming out of their caverns ; and was 
it not of this very country he wrote, that its population 
was exterminated ? Hear his words, written just 
there below, where the black ruin of Kilcolman Castle 
makes a blot upon the landscape : — 

" Out of every corner of the woods and glens they 
came creeping forth upon their hands, for their legs 
could not bear them ; they looked anatomies of 
death ; they spake like ghosts crying out of the 
graves ; they did eat of the carrions, happy when 
they could find them, yea, and one another soon 
after, insomuch as the very carcases they spared not 
to scrape out of their graves ; and, if they found a 
plot of water cresses or shamrocks, there they flocked 
as to a feast for the time ; yet not able long to continue 
wherewithal ; that in short space there were none 
almost left, and a most populous and plentiful 
country was suddenly left void of man or beast." 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 195 

Yet a few years ; and through these very files 
swept down the stalwart Rapparees, who surrounded 
Kilcolman Castle, and put the brand to this keep of 
the robber and the stranger ; and then with character- 
istic Irish chivalry dashed through the burning rooms 
to rescue a babe, whom, too late, they had heard was 
left behind by the Saxon servants. And here, after 
three hundred years confiscation and burning, exile 
and death, Connacht plantations and West Indian 
expatriation, here still are the Celts apparently as 
indomitable as ever. Surely, if Rome is the " Eternal 
City," the Irish are the " undying race." 

Let us go down from the hill-top in our course of 
Stations, and visit the low-lands. We pass at once 
under the shadow of another mighty frontier fortress, 
also belonging to Spenser, for he held three thousand 
acres of land here, confiscated from the Earl of 
Desmond. It is a splendid old keep, still well pre- 
served — a square, embattled tower, like that which 
suggested to Dante the simile of masculine fortitude 
— Sta come tone ferma. You can see it for miles 
around. Sometimes, when the sun shines, it is 
almost invisible, for the white face of it does not 
show against the sunlit mountains. But, generally, 
it stands out clear, distinct, well defined, a solid 
square of mediaeval m.asonry against the everlasting 
hills. It is Castlepooke — the keep of the Phooca or 
Witch ; for you must know that once on a time, a 
famous witch, and a malignant one, took up her 
quarters here, and wrought dire distress amongst the 
people around. She burned the corn in the fields, 
until the wheat ears vrere filled with soot instead of 



196 THE LITERARY LIFE 

grain, sterilised the milk in dairies until no amount 
of churning could produce cream, brought dread 
diseases on the cattle, etc., and alas ! there was no 
benevolent fairy to counteract the evil doings, or 
bring blessing for curse to the afflicted people. But 
there was a hope — a promise — a tradition, that if 
the habit of a Grey Friar could be flung over her in 
her sleep she would rise up and vanish in a flame 
of fire. And, one day, the emancipation came. A 
poor mendicant called at a farmer's house in the 
neighbourhood, and begged for alms and a night's 
lodging. It was freely given in this land of hospitality. 
The stranger slept, and lo ! curiosity led the vanithee 
to open and inspect the bundle the poor man brought. 
It was all he had, but the staft' for his hand. And 
she drew out the long grey habit of a friar. It was 
rash, perhaps sacrilegious ; but the time had come. 
God had sent His messenger. But who would dare 
face the tigress in her den ? Not one w^ould volunteer ! 
At last, a little child was requisitioned. She knew 
no fear, probably because she knew no sin. Care- 
lessly she ascended the high mound of the Castle, 
carelessly entered, carelessly threw the garment over 
the sleeping woman, who instantly rose in the air, 
angry and threatening, and passed away for ever- 
more in a flash of fire towards the West. So goes 
the legend ; and of course it is true ; but I do not 
vouch for it. 

Our next Station takes us down into the plain to 
Kilmacneesh — church and graveyard of St. McNeese, 
a disciple of St. Patrick's. Thence to Inchnagree 
(the island of the cattle pens), where quite lately a 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 197 

pathetic little incident took place. One day the very 
intelligent farmer who holds the land received a 
letter from a lady in England, asking was there any 
tradition of her family in that neighbourhood. She 
had a dim recollection that she was born somewhere 
there under the mountains of Mole. He at once wrote 
to say that he could point out the exact place where her 
father's house stood. She came over immediately 
and drove from the railway station to this remote place. 
The good farmer accompanied the trembHng lady 
along the road to where the house stood near a 
plantation of fir trees. '* There," he said, pointing 
to the spot from which time had now swept away 
even the ruins, ** there is where your house stood, 
and there you were born." The lady sat down on 
the broken edge of the fence, and wept. So do human 
hearts turn to their homes and cradles. Across 
Bawntigeen (the green field of the little house) we 
pass ; and our next Station is Kilcolman, Ardeen, 
and Bally vonare. Here was a church, built to St. 
Colman, one of St. Patrick's disciples ; and here in 
a little field is the Church of Rossdoyle or Rossdale,^ 
mentioned in the same page as Doneraile in the 
assessment made by Pope Nicolas in 1291 for the 
Crusades in the Holy Land. But St. Colman's 
Church and Priory are gone ; yet here, dating from 
1387, is the Castle of Kilcolman, famous for ever 
as the place where the " Faerie Queen " was written. 
It is now a solid stump of masonry, but must have 
extended far and wide across the meadow and above 

^ This little church is the oldest Christian Church in Ireland, 
if we except one near Bray. 



198 THE LITERARY LIFE 

the bog, there beneath, once an ornamental lake. 
How the imagination travels back across centuries 
to the old Desmond lords who built it ; to the 
Elizabethan usurper, who never preached but one 
solution of the eternal Irish question, and that the 
Cromwellian one of wholesale massacre ! 

Spenser, who would exterminate the native Irish 
like vermin, died a beggar in London, in a lane 
near the great new Cathedral of Westminster ; 
and Kilcolman Castle is now held by the Celto- 
Catholic Barrys ; and there, right under the old keep, 
is the white-washed cottage of the Secretary of the 
Land League — an unmistakable Celt of Celts — 
William O'Toole. 

And how the centuries glide into each other ; for 
here a few years ago the most popular representa- 
tive the great Republic of the W^est ever sent to 
Ireland, J. J. Piatt, wrote sonnets on the blackened 
ruin, and on the more modern structure beneath. 

Across the Awbeg, our course has taken us through 
Cahirmee, where, for three hundred years, the greatest 
horse fair in the world is held, on the nth and 12th 
July ; by Caherduggan, whose village (depopulated 
by plague), church and castle, are swept away ; by 
Cornahinch (hill of the island), Ardanaffron, which 
is either hill of the Mass, or Saffron Hill, its modern 
appellation, for here grew acres of yellow crocuses, 
which yielded the saffron with which the Irish in- 
variably dyed their outer garment ; by Bally-na-Dree, 
the town of the Druids, and Croagh-na-cree, where 
there still may be seen the sulphur and lithia well 
that wrought marvellous cures in pre-Patrician times ; 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 199 

and back to By-bloxe towne (the ancient name, for 
Doneraile is quite modern, dating only from 1291), 
to find the black pall of mourning hung over church 
and people, for this is Holy Week, and to-night the 
sweet Rosary, Sermon, and Benediction, always so 
bright and glorious and triumphant, give way to the 
solemn office of Tenebrae and its mournful lamen- 
tations. 

Holy Thursday : — 

Yes, indeed, my incredulous reader, we had the 
office of Tenebr^ last night here, even here, in this 
remote village ; and we sang the solemn dirges of 
Jeremias, and my good little choir did harmonise 
the '* Benedictus " and the " Miserere." It was not 
quite so impressive, perhaps, as what you have heard, 
so many times, in the Sistine Chapel ; but it was 
well sustained, and correct, and sure ; if our poor 
people only followed it in their heads and in their 
hearts, well, it must have left sweet and soothing, 
and penetential feelings there. 

Good Friday : — 

It falls cold, and chill, and mournful upon us all : 
yesterday was so bright and joyous we forgot we 
were in Lent. And the altar was so beautiful, with 
its red candles (are not candle flames always red in 
daylight }) and huge masses of flowers — spring 
flowers, narcissi, and tuUps, and hyacinths, and the 
lily of the valley — all throwing out the incense of 
their humble hearts before the feet of the hidden 
Creator. And, all day long, our Children of Mary, 



200 THE LITERARY LIFE 

in their blue cloaks, divided the hours among them, 
so that there never was a fear that our dear Lord 
should be left even for a moment alone. But there 
was no danger of that ; for all day long, the people 
thronged and dwelt in the little church, until very 
late at night, when, with a kind of pang, as of a 
parting with a beloved one, the candles were extin- 
guished, and the doors closed, and God left alone 
with His angels ! But this morning, there was a flash 
of lights for a moment again, which was instantly 
darkened after the procession of the Blessed Sacra- 
ment ; and the deep gloom of black drapery, hushed 
bells, mourning vestments, and the solemn figure on 
the cross, fell on our hearts and senses. 

Holy Saturday :~~ 

We had Tenebraj again last evening ; and, of 
course, a Passion Sermon. In one sense, the Passion 
Sermon is the greatest oratorical event of the year 
in Ireland. Men go to hear the Passion Sermon who 
won't go to Mass. Protestants attend. The priest is 
chosen for the office as far back as Ash Wednesday; and 
if he is young, and has not yet learned that the breath 
of popular applause, called fame, is a very futile and 
fugitive thing, he is naturally nervous and appre- 
hensive. The lines of the sermon, too, are strictly 
limited. It must extend to an hour at least. Anything 
short of that is a disappointment. And it must follow, 
detail after detail, the Gospel narrative. Any de- 
parture from that is viewed with great displeasure 
by the people, and is gravely censured hy the older 
priests. 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 201 

" 'Twas a good sermon enough ; but it was not 
a Passion Sermon," is the verdict. 

If the young priest has physical endurance to carry 
him over two hours, he is immortalized. Every one 
feels that real justice has been done to that sacred 
and ineffable theme. And, dear me ! how it touches 
their Catholic hearts ! And how they crowd around 
that pulpit. Here, just behind me, two or three 
are leaning over the altar rails ; beneath, the children 
have poked in their heads to get a better view of the 
" strange priest." The women, with hooded heads, 
are rocking themselves to and fro, under the magic 
of the eloquence ; now and again, some young girl 
covertly takes out her handkerchief, and, wiping her 
eyes hastily, tries to look impassive and unconcerned. 
Ah, me ! 'tis no use. That story of infinite suffering, 
infinite patience, and infinite love, will continue to 
touch the human heart until the dread time comes 
when the selfishness of modern life shall dry up all 
the springs of human affection, and the divinest ex- 
amples of self-surrender and abnegation cease to 
touch the films of eyes that stare blindly and un- 
knowingly at them. 

Ah, well ! the sermon is over, the Tenebrae 
concluded ; the little children have gone home in 
the dark, clinging to their mothers, and wondering, 
wondering in their own minds at the mighty preacher. 
And Holy Saturday has dawned — the brightest day 
in the year in my reckoning. For, after all, Easter 
Sunday is but a second and revised edition of Holy 
Saturday. Surely, all the joy and exultation of the 
Resurrection has spent itself, when, after the blessing 



202 THE LITERARY LIFE 

of the. font and the Paschal fire (always reminiscent 
of St. Patrick and Tara), and the mighty candle, and 
the prophecies and litanies, we flung off our plain 
albs and purple vestments, and tore away the violet 
veils from the statues, and the organ pealed out at 
the Gloria, and the great bell rang, and the acolytes, 
on tiptoe of expectation, pealed out a salvo of bells 
at the word ! And then that glorious Regina Coiliy 
by Lambilotte, is it not ? I don't know, and I don't 
care ; nor do I know or care whether it is strictly 
classical, or Cecilian, or what not. I leave all that to 
the dreadful people who laugh and cry by rule. All 
I know is this — that that splendid accompaniment 
seems to my uncultivated senses to harmonize with 
all the Rubrical requirements of this great mornings 
It would not be out of place as the orchestral rendering 
and resurrection-song of the great final day. Then 
Magnificat, short Vespers ; and Holy Week is over ! 
There is one drawback. The Lenten fast should 
close on Good Friday night at twelve o'clock. It is 
not congruous that after the mighty exultation of the 
Holy Saturday ceremonies we should have to sit 
down to a Lenten breakfast. 

Easter Sunday : — 

Well, I repent of and retract what I said above. 
Easter Sunday is not a replica or second edition of 
anything else on earth. It stands alone. This 
morning the children got up early to see the sun 
dancing ; for in Ireland the sun dances with joy 
on the Resurrection-morning. And all the neigh- 
bours, thronging to Mass, are joyful ; and ** A 



AND OTHER ESSAYS 203 

happy Aisther ! " is going all round. We had an 
immense Communion ; and at High Mass an im- 
mense congregation. 

** 'Twas aiqual to any two Masses I ever heard 
before," says a farmer from a neighbouring parish, 
who saw High Mass for the first time. And the 
Victimae Paschali was lovely ; and again, my heart 
leaped at the Regina Cobli ; and I thought I heard 
all Heaven tumultuously echoing that mighty psean 
of triumph to their great Queen. And the boys 
bolted at the Alleluias of the Ite Missa Est., as is usual 
all the world over. But they made up for it. For 
here, under my window, all the week, they are 
shouting Alleluia ! whenever they peg a top or hit 
a marble ; and all Nature is singing Alleluia ! for 
it is springtime, and the green buds are hanging on 
the trees, just ready to burst forth ; and the incense 
that hangs around the garments of the virgin season 
is afloat in the air ; and the river, there under the 
bridge is murmuring Alleluia ! and the red-beaked 
blackbirds and the speckled thrushes are shouting 
Alleluia ! And the noisy larks are filling the heavens 
with Alleluia I and, oh, dear me, all Ireland would 
ring with Alleluia ! from sea to sea, and from cliff 
to cliff ; but, alas ! it is as yet only a feeble prelude, 
for her resurrection-day has not dawned ; and no 
one has yet arisen to answer the mournful question : — 

" Who will roll back for us the stone at the Mouth 
of the Sepulchre ? For it is very great." 



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